Irish Home Rule Bill

“ The whole question, then, of the relation between Home Rule and agrarian reform may be summed up as follows:—Agrarian reform is necessary for the pacification of Ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently carried into effect without an Irish Government; an Irish Government can only be established by a Home Rule Bill: therefore a Home Rule Bill is necessary for the pacification of Ireland. It is idle to say, as has been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for agrarian reform without Home Rule. ”

“ We have had them in Ireland by the dozen, going round the farmers and encouraging them to persevere.
"The great advantage of Home Rule in the eyes of the farmers is this and this only—that an Irish House would settle the land question for ever. The people would take a good bill from the House of Commons at Westminster if they could get it, but they can't. They believe that their only hope is with an Irish Parliament. The most intelligent are now somewhat doubtful as to the substantial benefits to come. They fear heavy taxation. ”

“ If Great Britain resents the present system, she alone is to blame. As long as she insists on keeping the Irish Members out of Ireland, where they ought to be, she thoroughly deserves their tyranny, and would be wise to get rid of it by the means they suggest. Until they are given Home Rule, they are not only justified in using their power, but are bound, in duty and honour, to use it. To reproduce in the Home Rule Bill, albeit in a modified form, conditions which might lead to the same results as before would surely be a gratuitous act of unwisdom. ”

“ The Home Rule Bill is far more likely to be wrecked by timidity than by boldness, by precautions and compromises than by a fearless accommodation of British policy to Irish facts and needs.
As to the danger to Great Britain of separate Irish Customs, it seems to me to be greatly exaggerated. Ireland's own interests will primarily dictate her action. What she will decide her interest to be, nobody can foretell with certainty beyond a limited point, because Irish public opinion is not formed. ”

“ No means is left untried, no stone is left unturned to render abortive what the dry and caustic Northerners call the Home Ruin Bill, or the Bill for the Bitter Government of Ireland.
Moving hourly among people accurately and minutely acquainted with the local position, you cannot fail to be struck by the marvellous unanimity with which all Irish Unionists predict the exact result of such a bill as constitutes the present bone of contention, and their precise agreement as to concerted action should the crisis arise. They ridicule the English notion that they intend to take the field at once. ”

“ It is to be hoped that, whatever financial scheme is adopted for Ireland, this bad colonial precedent, together with the precedent of the Home Rule Bill of 1893, will not be made pretexts for perpetuating a system whose defects are so glaring, and which is a source of continual dissatisfaction to Ireland. If Irish Customs and Excise are to be outside Irish control, while their proceeds are to be credited to Ireland, let her whole collected revenue from those sources be credited to her, in spite of the excessive allocation that step would involve. ”

“ To give a man a vote for a Parliament at Dublin when he is demanding an acre or two of land, comes very near giving him a stone when he asks for bread. But I assume for a moment that the Irishmen, who express no great enthusiasm for the Home Rule Bill, desire the new constitution as ardently as sixty years or so ago our fathers desired parliamentary reform. Yet even on this assumption the belief in Home Rule as a panacea for Irish ills is childish, and belongs to a bygone stage of opinion. ”

“ If Home Rule should be adopted the serious people of Ireland, whose economic interests are at stake, might come to the front and take all representative offices themselves. We have come to the conclusion that enough of the Irish members to defeat the bill do not want Home Rule on any conditions. I know it is a custom when you arrive home every year that your friends meet you down the Bay and give you a reception. Then you give an interview of your impressions over here, and that interview is printed as widely in this country as in the United States. ”

“ Those who fear Home Rule as "Rome Rule" in Ireland had better, indeed, examine themselves as to whether their action in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has not, so far as it goes, led to this very same effect in England. It must never be forgotten that it was with the help of the 80 Irish votes, pressed back to Westminster by the Irish Bishops in sympathy with the Catholic Bishops in England, that the British Parliament passed those clauses of the 1902 Education Act which are most offensive to English Nonconformists. ”

“ The object of the Land Bill was a political one: to promote the contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in Ireland, by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. To do this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally round the institutions of their country. ”

“ In short, in Ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent owners of their holdings. An Irish Land Bill, then, dealing with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a Bill for converting the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. ”

“ The Land Commission, in their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the Irish State Authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice. If the statutory price, as settled according to the Act, is too low, they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years' purchase. If it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord will reduce it to a proper price. In the congested districts scheduled in the Bill the land, on a sale, passes to the Irish State Authority, as landlords, and not to the tenants ”

“ Naturally, their main opinions are very like those I have previously recorded as being prevalent in the neighbouring counties of Limerick, Cork, and Kerry. They believe the present time unseasonable, and they have no confidence in the present representatives of the Nationalist party. They believe that the Irish people are not yet sufficiently educated to be at all capable of self-government, and they fail to see what substantial advantages would accrue from any Home Rule Bill. ”

“ So much for the spirit in which we should approach the problem, and I pass to the consideration of the problem itself. What is to be the framework of Home Rule? I take it for granted that there must, in the broad sense, be responsible government, that is to say, an Irish Legislature, with an Irish Cabinet responsible to that Legislature, and, through the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Crown. So much is common ground with nearly all advocates of Home Rule, for I take it that there is no question of reverting to anything in the nature of the abortive Irish Council Bill of 1907. ”

“ Gladstone introduced as a pendant to the Home Rule Bill of 1886 offered to every Irish landlord the option of selling his estate to his tenants, who would thereby become occupying owners at once, paying an interest of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years on the price, which would be twenty years' purchase of the judicial rents, paid by the State issue of fifty million pounds of Consols with the revenues of Ireland as security. ”

“ In the next place, it is to be noted that the checks proposed affect legislation only and not administration. If the Bill of 1893 or any similar Bill should become law, the whole executive power in Ireland will be in an Irish Ministry responsible to an Irish Assembly; and it is obvious that many of the wrongs against which the restrictive clauses of the Bill were directed may be inflicted by administrative act or omission as effectively as by legislation. To quote a work of authority [33] —
"An independent Irish Executive will possess immense power. ”

“ They were ill-rewarded for their pains, for never has a Home Rule debate produced fewer interesting moments. The Chief Secretary was so studiously restrained in explaining the merits of the Bill that the "yawning chasm" which, according to its opponents, the measure is going to create between Southern and Northern Ireland was to be observed in advance on the countenances of many of his listeners. Years ago Mr. Balfour told the Irish Nationalists that Great Britain was not to be bored into acceptance of Home Rule ”

“ One argument remains to be noticed which the opponents of Home Rule urge as absolutely condemnatory of the measure, whereas, if properly weighed, it is conclusive in its favour. Home Rule, they say, is a mere question of sentiment. "National aspirations" are the twaddle of English enthusiasts who know nothing of Ireland. What is really wanted is the reform of the Land Law. Settle the agrarian problem, and Home Rule may be relegated to the place supposed to be paved with good intentions. The Irish will straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding, contented, loyal people. ”

“ Lastly, the sentiment of Home Rule has gained the sympathy of large bodies of electors in the constituencies of Great Britain, and, under the circumstances, it is difficult to suppose that, even if the country remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the Irish relinquish their most cherished ambition.
We hear, from men who ought to know something of Ireland, that if the Land question is once settled, and dual ownership practically abolished, the tenants will be satisfied, and the movement for Home Rule will no longer find active support in Ireland. ”

“ We are opposed to Home Rule because, in our belief, it would seriously weaken our national position; because it would put a stop to the remarkable increase of prosperity in Ireland which has resulted from the Land Purchase Act; and because it would inflict intolerable injustice on the minority in Ireland, who believe that under a Government controlled by the men who dominate the United Irish League neither their civil nor their religious liberty would be safe. ”

“ Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen into the same error. By the power of an English majority, measures have been passed which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority of the Irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in Ireland. This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded to relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet this was never stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. It is supported by millions of Irish settled in America and in Australia ”

“ England, apart from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, still returns a majority opposed to Home Rule, but public opinion does not show any signs of vigorous or violent opposition as in 1886. The Liberals, the Irish, and the Labour Party are united in its favour. The passing of the Land Acts is rapidly removing the agrarian evil, and the landlords have not the same cause for anxiety as formerly. The grant of Local Government is working well, and in spite of much poverty the condition of the people is improving. ”

“ One only policy has never been tried in Ireland—honest Home Rule.
Certainly, if Home Rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil are refuted, Ireland must go without Home Rule for ever. "If the sky fall, we shall catch larks." But he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that contingency. And not less foolish is the statesman who sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified by the event ”

“ We believe Home Rule to be the greatest obstacle to Irish progress and prosperity. Irish Nationalists have made Home Rule their only idol and denounce every one who will not worship at its shrine. Every reform, unless they thought that it tended to advance Home Rule or magnify their powers, has received their hostility, sometimes open and avowed, at other times secret and working through devious ways.
No one who reads the history of Ulster can doubt that its inhabitants have not as much love of Ireland and as much wish to see her prosperous as the Nationalists. ”

“ It is also that, on surveying the past, we find not merely that Home Rule has often saved Ireland, but that always the wider and the more generous the form of Home Rule the more it has helped Ireland. The wiser course of accepting Irish advice in Irish affairs has always turned the tide of disaster, and brought the hope of a new happiness for Ireland. Surely here we have a convincing proof that the logical consummation of this policy by the restoration of Home Rule is the only means of bringing back Ireland to a full and secure enjoyment of lasting well-being. ”

“ Not until Home Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the extremists intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical spirit. Surely this is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded by the moderate men—and there are many—who, if Home Rule comes, intend to throw their abilities into making it a success, and who will be indispensable to Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances of political warfare. ”