Chapter X: The Framework of Home Rule (1)

I.

THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM.

It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution--not pedantically adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great Britain than that of any Colony.

Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between "Federal" and other systems of Home Rule.

A.

With regard to the first of these obstacles, we have got to make a big national effort to take a sensible and dispassionate view of the whole problem. We must cease to regard Ireland as an insubordinate captive, as a "possession" to be exploited for profit, or as a child to be humoured and spoiled. All this is _vieux jeu_. It belongs to an utterly discredited form of so-called Imperialism, which might more fitly be called Little Englandism, masquerading in the showy trappings of Bismarckian philosophy. We have gone too far in the "dismemberment" of our historic Empire, and near enough to the dismemberment of what remains, to apply this worn-out metaphor to the process of making Ireland politically free.

In Ireland we must build on trust, or we build on sand.

What is best for Ireland will be best for the Empire.

Let us firmly grasp these principles, or we shall fail. They may be carried to the extreme point. If it were for Ireland's moral and material good to become an independent nation, it would be Great Britain's interest to encourage her to secede and assume the position of a small State like Belgium, whose independence in our own interests we guarantee. Since nobody of sense, in or out of Ireland supposes that her interest lies in that direction, we need not consider the point; but it is just as well to bear in mind that a prosperous and friendly neighbour on a footing of independence is better than a discontented and backward neighbour on a footing of dependence. The corollary is this--that any restrictions or limitations upon the subordinate Irish Government and Parliament which are not scientifically designed to secure the easy working of the whole Imperial machinery, but are the outcome of suspicion and distrust, will serve only to aggravate existing evils. When the supreme object of a Home Rule measure is to create a sense of responsibility in the people to whom it is extended, what could be more perversely unwise than to accompany the gift with a declaration of the incompetence of the people to exercise responsibility, and with restraints designed to prevent them from proving the contrary?

Centuries of experience have not yet secured general acceptation for this simple principle. In this domain of thought the tenacity of error is marvellous, even if we make full allowance for the disturbing effect on men's minds of India and other coloured dependencies where despotic, or semi-despotic, systems are in vogue. Since the expansion of England began in the seventeenth century, it cannot be said that the principle of trusting white races to manage their own affairs has ever received the express and conscious sanction of a united British people. It has been repeatedly repudiated by Governments in the most categorical terms, and repudiated sometimes to the point of bloodshed. In other cases it has met with lazy retrospective acquiescence on the discovery that powers surreptitiously obtained or granted without formal legislation had not been abused. The Australian Acts of 1850 and 1855 were the first approach to a spontaneous application of the full principle; but even then many statesmen were not fully alive to the consequences of their action, while there was no public interest, and very little Parliamentary interest, in the fate of these remote dependencies. The fully developed modern doctrine of comradeship with the great self-governing Dominions, a doctrine which we may date from the accession of Mr. Chamberlain to Colonial Secretaryship in 1895, was not the natural outcome of a belief in self-government, but a sudden and effusive acceptation of its matured results in certain definite cases. Irish Home Rule itself had, in the preceding decade, twice been rejected by the nation. With the first opportunity, after 1895, of testing belief in the principle, namely, in the Transvaal Constitution of 1905, the Government failed. Finally, in 1906, when, to redeem that failure, for the first time in the whole history of the Empire a Cabinet spontaneously and unreservedly declared its full belief in the principle, and translated that belief into law, the whole of the Opposition, representing nearly half the electorate, washed their hands of the policy, and, if the constitutional means had existed, would, admittedly, have defeated it, as they had defeated the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893. The change of national opinion has, I believe, been considerable; but the circumstances remain ominous for the dispassionate discussion of the Irish Constitution. Patriotic people can only do their best to ensure that the grant of Home Rule shall not be nullified by restrictions and limitations which, if they are designed merely to appease opposition, are destined to create friction and discontent.

I am far from implying that restrictions are bad things in themselves. All Constitutions, whether the sole work of the men who are to live under them, like that of the United States, or the gift of a Sovereign State to a dependency, or the joint work of a Sovereign and a dependent State, contain restrictions designed for the common good. The criterion of their value is the measure of consent they meet with from those who have to live under and work the Constitution, and it is that circumstance which makes it urgent that Irish opinion should be evoked upon their future Constitution, and that the Irish Nationalist party should think out its own scheme of Home Rule. The Constitution of the United States contains many self-imposed restrictions upon the powers both of the Central and the State Governments, in the interest of minorities; and nobody accuses the Americans of having insulted themselves.

It will be no slur on Ireland, for example, if the most elaborate safeguards against the oppression of the Protestant minority are inserted in the Bill, provided that Nationalist Ireland, recognizing the fears of the minority, spontaneously recommends, or, at any rate, freely consents to their insertion--a consent which could not, of course, be expected if their tendency was to derange the functions of Government or cripple the Legislature.

On the other hand, it would be a slur on Ireland which she would justly resent, besides being a highly impolitic step, to deny to the Irish Executive an important power, such, for example, as the control of its own police.

B.

It is a grave difficulty that there is no public opinion in Ireland as to the form of the Irish Constitution. That is an almost inevitable result of political conditions past and present. Violent intestinal antagonisms are not favourable to constructive thought. The best men of a country, working in harmony, are needed to devise a good Constitution, and if any Irishman could succeed in convening a Conference like that which created the South African Union, he would be famous and honoured for ever in the annals of the future Ireland. That Conference, we must remember, was itself the result of the grants of Home Rule two years previously, and these grants in their turn were greatly facilitated by the co-operation of Britons and Dutchmen.[73] Canada, in 1840, is a warning of the errors made in constructing a Constitution without such co-operation. Eventually it had to be torn up and refashioned. The best way of avoiding any such error in Ireland's case is to expel the spirit of distrust which animated the framers of the Canadian Union Act of 1840.

C.

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.[74] But agreement upon responsible government does not carry us far enough. What are to be the relations between the subordinate Irish Parliament and Government, and the Imperial Parliament and Government?

We immediately feel the need of a scientific nomenclature. In popular parlance, two possible types of Home Rule are recognized--"Federal" and "Colonial." Both, of course, may be "Colonial," because there are Colonial Federations as well as Colonial Unitary States. But, nomenclature apart, the two possible types of Irish Home Rule correspond to two distinct types of subordinate Constitution. The "Colonial" type is peculiar to the British Empire, the other is to be found in many parts of the world--the United States, for example, and Germany, and Switzerland.

Let us examine these types a little more closely, confining ourselves as far as possible to the British Empire, past and present, because within it we can find nearly all the instruction we need. As I showed in my sketch of the growth of Colonial Home Rule, all the Colonies now classed as self-governing, together with the American Colonies before their independence, were originally unitary States, subordinate to the Crown, each looking directly to Great Britain, possessing no constitutional relation with one another, and gradually obtaining their individual local autonomies under the name of "Responsible Government." New Zealand and Newfoundland alone have maintained their original individualities, and their Constitutions, from an historical standpoint, are the best examples of the first of the two types we are considering. Now for the Federal type. Very early in the history of the American Colonies (in 1643) the New England group formed amongst themselves a loose confederation, which was not formally recognized by the British Government, and which perished in 1684. In the next century the War of Independence produced the confederation of all the thirteen Colonies, but this was little more in effect than a very badly contrived alliance for military purposes, and it was a keen sense of the inadequacy of the bond that stimulated the construction of the Great Constitution of 1787, the first Federal Union ever devised by the English-speaking race. All the States combined to confer certain defined powers upon a Federal Parliament, to which each sent representatives, and upon a Federal Executive whose head, the President, all shared in electing. At the same time, each State preserved its own Constitution and the power to amend it, with the one broad condition that it must be Republican, and subject to any limitation upon its powers which the Federal Constitution imposed.

Eighty years elapsed before any similar Federal Union was formed by Colonies within the British Empire. As we have seen, all the various North American Colonies which received Constitutions in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and all the Australasian Colonies similarly honoured in the nineteenth century, were placed in direct relation to the British Crown and in isolation from one another. Upper Canada had no political ties with Lower Canada, Nova Scotia none with New Brunswick, Victoria none with Tasmania. Several abortive schemes were proposed at one time or another for the Federation of the North American Colonies, but the first measure of amalgamation, namely, the union of the two Canadas in 1840, was a step in the wrong direction, and bore, as I have shown, a marked resemblance, particularly in the motives which dictated it, to the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. It was a compulsory Union, imposed by the Mother Country, and founded on suspicion of the French. So far from being Federal, it was a clumsy and unworkable Legislative Union of the two Provinces, which lasted as long as it did only because the principle of responsible government, established in 1847, covered a multitude of sins. The somewhat similar attempt in Australia in 1843 to amalgamate the two settlements of Port Phillip, afterwards Victoria, and New South Wales, at a time when each had evolved a distinct individuality of its own, was defeated by the strenuous opposition of the Port Phillip colonists, and revoked in 1850.

Meanwhile, all aspirations after Federation in the outlying parts of the Empire were discouraged by the home authorities. The most practical plan of all, Sir George Grey's great scheme of South African Federation in 1859, was nipped in the bud. Canada eventually led the way. The failure of the Canadian Union brought about its dissolution in 1867 by the Provinces concerned, under the sanction of Great Britain (an example of really sensible "dismemberment"), and their voluntary Federation as Ontario and Quebec, together with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, under the collective title of the Dominion of Canada, and the subsequent inclusion in this Federation of all the North American Provinces with the exception of Newfoundland.

Note, at the outset, that this Federation differed from that of the United States in being founded on the recognition of an organic relation with an external suzerain authority--an authority which the Americans had abjured in framing their independent Republic. In the matter of constitutional relations with Great Britain, the Dominion of Canada now assumed, in its collective capacity, the position formerly held by each individual Province, and still held by Newfoundland. Direct relations between the individual Provinces of the Federation and the Mother Country practically ceased, and were replaced by a Federal relation with the Dominion. Provincial Lieutenant-Governors are appointed by the Dominion Government acting in the name of the Governor-General, not directly by the British Government,[75] and, although in constitutional theory the Crown, as in every least fraction of the Empire, is the sole and immediate source of executive authority, and an indispensable agent in all legislation, not only in the Dominion, but in the Provinces,[76] in actual practice the only organic connection left between a Province and Great Britain is the right of appeal directly to the King in Council, that is, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, without the intervention of the Supreme Court of Canada.

So much for the external relations of the Dominion. In respect to the domestic relations between the Provinces and the Dominion, the Federal principle used in Canada is fundamentally the same as that which obtains in the United States and in every true Federation in the world, whether Monarchical or Republican, whether self-contained, like the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, or linked, as in the British Empire, to a supreme and sovereign Government centred in London. Each Province, as in every genuine Federation, is an _imperium in imperio_, possessing a Constitution of its own, and delegating central powers to a Federal Government. The nature and extent of the powers thus delegated or reserved, and the character of the Federal Constitution itself, vary widely in different Federations, but we need not consider these differences in any detail. Let us remark generally, however, that the powers of the Canadian Province are much smaller than those of the American State, and that what lawyers call "the residuary powers"--that is, all powers not specifically allotted--belong to the Dominion, whereas in the United States and Switzerland they belong to the State or Canton.

The Australian Commonwealth of 1900 came into being in the same way as the Dominion of Canada, by the voluntary act of the several Colonies concerned--Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland--under the sanction of the British Crown and Parliament. New Zealand stood out, and remained, like Newfoundland, a unitary State directly subordinate to Great Britain. Nor, in the matter of relations with the Mother Country, were the federating Colonies merged so completely in the Commonwealth as the Provinces of Canada in the Dominion. The Canadians had not only to construct the Dominion Constitution, but new Constitutions for two of the federating Provinces--Ontario and Quebec--and it was natural, therefore, that they should identify the Provinces more closely with the Dominion. The Australians, having to deal with six ready-made State Constitutions, left them as they were, subject only to the limitations imposed by the Commonwealth Constitution. One of the results is that the State Governors are still appointed directly by the British Government, not by the Commonwealth. This constitutional arrangement, however, has no very practical significance. The right of appeal direct from a State Court to the King in Council, without the intervention of the High Court of Australia, remains, as in Canada, the only direct link between the individual States and the British Government.

The Federal tie between the States and the Commonwealth, as defined in the Act of 1900, is looser than that between the Provinces of Canada and the Dominion, and bears more resemblance to the relation between a State and the Federal Government of the United States. As in that country and in Switzerland, residuary powers rest with the State or Canton Governments, not with the Federal Government.

The South African Union of 1909, comprising the Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange River Colony, had a Federal origin, so to speak, in that the old Colonies agreed to abandon a great part of their autonomies to a central Government and Legislature; but the spirit of unity carried them so far as almost to annul State rights. The powers now retained by the provincial Legislatures are so small, and the control of the Union Government is so far-reaching, that the whole system is rightly described as a Union, not as a Federation. The Provinces, which are really little more than municipalities, have no longer any relation except in remotest constitutional theory with the Mother Country, their Administrators are appointed by the Union, and, unlike the Provinces of Canada and the States of Australia, they have not even an internal system of responsible government.[77] No direct appeal lies to the King in Council from the provincial Courts, which are now, in fact, only "divisions" of the Supreme Court of South Africa. The Provinces, in short, do not possess "Constitutions" at all. Their powers can be extinguished without their individual assent by an Act of the Union Parliament, whereas the Canadian Dominion has no power to amend either the Dominion or the Provincial Constitutions, and in Australia constitutional amendments must be agreed to by the States separately as well as by the Commonwealth Parliament. But these revolutionary changes in the status of the old South African Colonies were brought about, let us remember, by the free consent of the inhabitants of South Africa, after prolonged deliberation.

The United States, the Australian Commonwealth, and the Canadian Dominion are, then, the three genuine Federations which the English-speaking races have constructed. The two last are included in the present British Empire, and they stand side by side with the three unitary Colonies--South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland. The constitutional relation of each of these five bodies to the Mother Country is precisely the same, although they differ widely in internal structure, as in wealth and population. Within each of the two Federations, as we have seen, there exists a nexus of minor Constitutions, State or Provincial, which have virtually no relations with the Mother Country, but are integral parts of the major Federation.

II.

FEDERAL OR COLONIAL HOME RULE?

We are now in a position to pose our main question, and the simplest course is to pose it in an illustrative form. Broadly speaking, is the relation between Ireland and Great Britain to resemble that between the Province of Quebec and the Dominion of Canada, or that between the Dominion of Canada and the United Kingdom? One might equally well contrast the relation of Victoria to the Australian Commonwealth with the relation of New Zealand or Newfoundland to the United Kingdom. I choose the Canadian illustration because it is more compact and striking, and because it corresponds more closely to the history and to the realities of the case. Moreover, Quebec, although she had a no more stormy domestic history, owing to lack of Home Rule, than Ontario, is bi-racial, and on that account underwent in 1840 compulsory amalgamation with her wholly British neighbour, just as Ireland, originally bi-racial, was forcibly amalgamated with Great Britain in 1800. The Canadian partners agreed to break this bond, to fashion a better one on the Federal principle, in the manner vaguely adumbrated by advocates of the "Federal" principle for Irish Home Rule, and, as regards their relations with the Mother Country, to pool their interests and accept representation by the Dominion alone.

Quebec Home Rule or Dominion Home Rule? Needless to say, these are only broad types chosen expressly to illustrate two possible types of relation between Ireland and Great Britain, which I shall henceforth refer to as "Federal" and "Colonial." There is no reason why we should not profit in other respects by both examples, nor is there any possibility of copying either faithfully.

Both types fulfil the fundamental condition laid down at the beginning of our discussion--both, that is to say, are consistent with responsible government in Ireland. Quebec, in its inner working, is a microcosm of the Dominion, and the Dominion system of responsible government is almost an exact copy of the unwritten British Constitution. In Quebec (as in all the Provinces and States of Canada and Australia) there is a Cabinet, headed by a Prime Minister, composed of Members of the Legislature, and responsible at once to that Legislature and to the Lieutenant-Governor as representing the Crown. Ireland, under a similar system (and, _a fortiori_, if she were put in the position of the Dominion), would have a Cabinet responsible at once to the Irish Legislature and to the Lord-Lieutenant representing the Crown. The parallel is more apposite in the case of the Province of Quebec than in the case of an Australian State, because, as I noted above, the provincial Lieutenant-Governor is actually appointed by the Dominion Government, and is in his turn responsible in the first instance to that Government, just as the Irish Governor, or Lord-Lieutenant, who, under Home Rule, will for the first time justify his existence, is, and will still be, appointed by the British Government.

But with the possibility of responsible government granted, it must be confessed that the arguments against "Quebec Home Rule" as a measure of practical politics at the present moment, are insuperable. In the first place there is no question in the coming Bill of federalizing the United Kingdom on the lines of the Dominion of Canada--that is, of constructing a new Federal Parliament elected by the whole realm, together with new local Legislatures elected by the various fractions of the realm. Scottish and Welsh Home Rule are in the air, but they are not practical issues. English Home Rule is not even in the air. I mean that Englishmen, whatever their views on the congestion of Parliamentary business owing to the pressure of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish affairs, have not seriously considered the idea of a subordinate Legislature exclusively English, which would be just as essential a feature of a completely federalized kingdom as subordinate Legislatures exclusively Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.

Not that it is essential to the federalization of the United Kingdom that Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, should all have separate Legislature. Any one of these fractions could coalesce with another or others in a joint Legislature. It would be technically possible, though highly unreasonable, to go to the extreme of giving Great Britain, regarded as one Province, a separate Legislature; Ireland, regarded as another Province, a separate Legislature; and, above these two subordinate bodies, a new Imperial Parliament representing the whole realm. Such a dual Federation was nearly coming about in Canada, when Ontario and Quebec dissolved their Union and resolved to federate. It became a quadruple Federation, owing to the adhesion of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick; but in a dual form it would have worked just as well. It is scarcely necessary to say that the disparity in population, resources, and power between Ireland and Great Britain render a dual Federation, which, of course, involves three Legislatures, chimerical. What I want to insist on is that, whatever subdivisions are adopted, it is absolutely essential to every Federation that there should be a division of powers between a central and at least two local Legislatures--three altogether. That is the minimum. Other things are also essential, but for the moment we can confine ourselves to the outstanding requirement. Now, there is no question in the coming Bill of any such Federation. Later years may see such a development, whether from pressure of work on the Imperial Parliament or from irresistible demand for Home Rule from Scotland or Wales, or both, but not next year. The Bill will contemplate two Parliaments, not three, namely, the existing Imperial Parliament and the Irish Legislature. There is, therefore, no question of Federal Home Rule, and the term "Federal," as applied to Irish Home Rule at the present time, is meaningless.

Nor can the coming Bill for Ireland make any preparation, technically, for a general Federation. Morally, as I shall show, it might have an important effect in stimulating local sentiment, not only in England, Scotland, and Wales, but in Ireland, towards a general Federation in the future, but in its mechanical structure it must be not merely non-Federal, but anti-Federal. One often hears it carelessly propounded that Irish Home Rule, so devised as to be applicable in later years, if they so desire, to Scotland, Wales, and England, will give us by smooth mechanical means a General Federation. This is a fallacy. At one stage or another, the earliest or the latest, we should have to create a totally new central Parliament, still elected by the whole people, but exclusively devoted to Imperial affairs, and wholly exempt from local business, before we possessed anything in the nature of a Federation. But, whatever the future has in store, it would be a scandal if Irish Home Rule were to be hampered or delayed by the existence of Scotch or Welsh claims, and it is earnestly to be hoped that no action of that kind will be taken. The case of Ireland is centuries old, and more urgent than ever. It differs radically from any case that can possibly be made for Scotland and Wales.

The Bill, I repeat, must be anti-Federal, centrifugal. In the case of Ireland we have first to dissolve an unnatural union, and then to revive an old right to autonomy, before we can reach a healthy Federal Union. Such, exactly, was the history of Canada. If, in that case, the dissolution of the Legislative Union and the construction of the Federal Union were consummated simultaneously in the British North America Act of 1867, they were nevertheless two distinct phases, and of these two phases the first, implying the revival of the old separate autonomies, was the indispensable precursor of Federal Union. This antecedent recognition of autonomy was not peculiar to Canada. Every Federation in the world arose in the same way, by the voluntary act of States under one Crown or suzerainty, but independent of one another, and it is of the essence of Federalism that this psychological condition should exist. Compulsory Federation would not last a year. It would indeed be practicable to federalize the United Kingdom by one Legislative Act, but the prior right to and fitness for complete Home Rule on the part of each of the component parts would have to be implicitly recognized.

It needs only a moment's consideration of Anglo-Irish history to see the special applicability of the psychological rule to Ireland. The evils of the Canadian Union, during the twenty-seven years of its duration, are infinitesimal beside the mischief, moral and material, which have been caused to both partners by the forcible amalgamation of Great Britain and Ireland; the waste of indigenous talent, industrial and political; the dispersion all over the globe of Irishmen; the conversion of friends into enemies, of peaceable citizens into plotters of treason, of farmers into criminals, of poets and statesmen into gaolbirds; the check to the production of wealth and Anglo-Irish commerce; the dislocation and demoralization of Parliamentary life; and, saddest results of all, the reactionary effect upon British statesmanship, domestic and Imperial, and the deterioration of Irish character within Ireland. The voluntary principle--at any rate, among the English-speaking races--is as essential to a true Union, like that of the South African Colonies or that of Scotland and England, as to a Federation. It is a sheer impossibility to create a perfect, mechanical Union on a basis of hatred and coercion; witness the strangely anomalous colonial features surviving in Irish Government--the Lord-Lieutenancy, the separate administration, and the standing army of police.

Persons inclined to reckon the advantages, whether of Federation or of Union, in pounds, shillings, and pence, may regard the psychological requirement as fanciful. It is not fanciful; on the contrary, it is related in the clearest way to the concrete facts of the situation. Before there is any question of Federation Ireland needs to find herself, to test her own potentialities, to prove independence of character, thought, and action, and to discover what she can do by her own unaided will with her own resources. As I endeavoured to show in the last chapter, these are the true reasons for Home Rule.

Home Rule is neither a luxury nor a plaything, but a tremendously exacting duty which must be undertaken by every country conscious of repression and valuing its self-respect, and which Ireland is praying to be allowed to undertake. When a people has learnt to understand the extent of its own powers and limitations, then it can safely and honourably co-operate on a Federal basis with other peoples, and, in the interests of efficiency and economy, can delegate to a central Government, partly of its own choice, functions hitherto locally exercised. Once more, that is the origin of all true Federations, British and foreign, in all parts of the world.

If, then, the Home Rule Bill cannot in legal form be a federating or unifying measure, it must be one of a precisely opposite character, and a measure of devolution. It is a proof of the need for a scientific nomenclature that the word "devolution" has to Irish ears come to mean something similar in kind to "Federal" Home Rule, but less in degree, and something different in kind from "Colonial" Home Rule, and infinitely less in degree. What a tangle of truth and fallacy from the misuse of a single word! It is associated rightly with the ill-starred Irish Council Bill of 1907, and it has been universally but wrongly used to indicate a small measure of local government in contradistinction to the Home Rule Bills of Mr. Gladstone and, _a fortiori_, to any more liberal schemes.

Nevertheless, the problem before us is one of devolution pure and simple, and the question is, how far is devolution to go? It may go to the full length of Colonial Home Rule, that is, Ireland may be vested with the full freedom now enjoyed by a self-governing Colony (for the grants of Colonial Home Rule were measures of devolution), or it might at the other extreme take the form of a petty municipal government. By hypothesis, however, we are precluded from considering any scheme which does not admit of responsible government in Ireland. That condition commits us to something in the nature of "Colonial" Home Rule, now enjoyed by States widely varying in size, wealth, and population, from the Dominion of Canada, with over seven million inhabitants, to Newfoundland, with under a quarter of a million inhabitants and very slender resources. It is worth notice also (to shift our analogy for the moment) that little Newfoundland, which, owing to divergency of interest, has declined both federation with the Dominion and union with any of the constituent parts of the Dominion, subsists happily and peacefully by the side of her powerful neighbour; and that New Zealand, for the same reason, prefers to occupy the same independent position by the side of Australia.

III.

THE EXCLUSION OR RETENTION OF IRISH MEMBERS AT WESTMINSTER.[78]

We have discarded the "Federal" solution as wholly impracticable, and have arrived at the "Colonial" solution. And at this point I feel it necessary to plead for the reader's patient, if reluctant, attention to what follows. The solution I suggest is unpopular, mainly, I believe, because prejudice has so beclouded the issue in the past, and because for the eighteen years since the last Home Rule Bill, while prejudice has diminished, the subject of Irish Home Rule has ceased to be studied with scientific care.

Where is the crux of the problem? In what provision of the coming Bill will the difference between Federal Home Rule and Colonial Home Rule arise? The answer is clear: in the retention or exclusion of Irish Members at Westminster. No Colony has representatives at Westminster. The Federal solution, on the other hand, whether it be applied to the whole Empire or to the United Kingdom alone, involves an exclusively Federal Parliament unconcerned with State or provincial affairs. That we have not got. What we have got is an absolutely supreme and sovereign Parliament which has legal authority, not only over all Imperial affairs within and without the United Kingdom, but over the minutest local affairs. Unrepresented though the Colonies are, they can legally be taxed, coerced, enslaved at any moment by an Act passed by a party majority in this Parliament. Such measures, though legal, would be unconstitutional; but, both by law and custom, and in actual daily practice, Parliament passes and enforces certain Acts affecting the self-governing Colonies, and wields potential and actual authority of all-embracing extent over the Empire and over the local affairs of the United Kingdom.

When we set up an Irish Legislature, then, we have to contemplate four different classes of affairs in a descending scale: (1) Affairs of common interest to the whole Empire; (2) affairs of exclusive interest to the United Kingdom; (3) affairs exclusively British; (4) affairs exclusively Irish.

With regard to (1), the prospects of Imperial Federation do not affect the Irish issue. It is no doubt illogical and sometimes highly inconvenient that the British Cabinet and Parliament, representing British and Irish electors only, should decide matters which deeply concern the whole Empire, including the self-governing Colonies, but it is the fact. In the meantime we are securing very effective consultation with the self-governing Colonies by the method of Imperial Conference. A Federal Parliament for the whole Empire is a possible though a remote alternative to that system. Colonial representation in the present Imperial Parliament is an altogether impracticable alternative. The suggestion had often been made for the American Colonies at the height of their discontent, later for Canada as an alternative to the Act of 1791, and in recent times also. The same fallacious idea underlay the Union of Ireland with Great Britain and her representation in Parliament, while retaining colonial institutions. At present the prospects of Imperial Federation seem to be indifferent. On the other hand, the affection between all branches of our race which is the indispensable groundwork of Federation becomes visibly stronger, and will become stronger, provided that we do not revert to the ancient and discredited policy either of dictating to the Colonies or taking sides with one or another of the parties within them, provided also that the Colonies in their growing strength do not dictate to us or take sides with one or other of our parties.

But, whatever the prospects of Imperial Federation, so long as the present situation lasts, there is no reason for giving a self-governing Ireland more control over Imperial matters affecting the self-governing Colonies than the self-governing Colonies themselves possess. The present position is illogical enough; that would be to render it doubly illogical. Representation of Ireland, therefore, at Westminster, on the ground that she should take part in settling matters of the widest Imperial purport, is indefensible. The alternative and much more effectual method, as with the Colonies, is Conference.

(2-4) But it is when we come to regard the United Kingdom as a self-contained entity that the difficulty of retaining Irish Members at Westminster appears most formidable. If we discard the Federal solution we must discard it wholeheartedly, not from a pedantic love of logic, but to avoid real, practical anomalies which might cause the whole political machine to work even worse than it does at present. From what I have written, it will be seen at once that to retain the Irish Members in the House of Commons, while giving Ireland responsible government, would be to set up a kind of hybrid system, retaining the disadvantages of the Union without gaining the advantages of Federalism. A Federal system needs a Federal Parliament, which we have not got, and shall not get for a long time yet. To introduce into it a quasi-Federal element is to mix oil with water.

I state the proposition in this broad way at first in order to push home the truth that Irish representation at Westminster will involve anomalies and dangers which, beyond a certain very limited point, cannot be mitigated. Methods of mitigation I will deal with in a moment. Let me remark first upon the strange history of this question of Irish representation at Westminster. Obviously it is the most fundamental question of all in the matter of Home Rule. The whole structure of the Bill hangs on it. It affects every provision, and particularly the financial provisions. Yet Mr. Gladstone went no farther than to call it an "organic detail," and in popular controversy it is still generally regarded in that light, or even in a less serious light. As a matter of history, however, it has proved to be a factor of importance in deciding the fate of the Home Rule Bills. In 1886 Mr. Gladstone, in proposing to exclude Irish Members altogether, roused a storm of purely sentimental opposition. In 1893, in proposing to retain them--first with limited functions, then on the old terms of complete equality with British Members--he met with opposition even more formidable, because it was not merely sentimental, but unanswerably practical. On both occasions Mr. Chamberlain took a prominent part in the opposition: in 1886 because he was then a Federalist, advocating "Quebec" Home Rule for Ireland, and regarding the exclusion of Irish Members from Westminster as contravening the Federal principle; in 1893 because, having ceased to be a Home Ruler, he had no difficulty in showing that the retention of Irish Members, either with full or limited functions, was neither Federation nor Union, but an unworkable mixture of the two.

These facts should be a warning to those who trifle thoughtlessly with what they call "Federal" Home Rule. It was through a desperate desire to conciliate that Mr. Gladstone caught at the Federal chimera in 1893, and produced a scheme which he himself could not defend. And it was one of the very statesmen that he sought to conciliate--a statesman, moreover, possessing one of the keenest and strongest intellects of the time--who snatched at the chimera in 1886, and argued it out of existence in 1893. We Home Rulers do not want a repetition of those events. We want Home Rule, and if we are to be defeated, let us be defeated on a simple straightforward issue, not on an indefensible complication of our own devising.

Now to details. There are five ways of dealing with the question, and of these I will take first the four different ways of including Irish Members in the House of Commons, leaving their total _exclusion_ to the last.

1. Inclusion of Irish Members in their full numbers for all purposes--that is, with a right to vote upon all questions--British, Irish, and Imperial. [By "full numbers" I mean, not the existing figure of 103, but numbers fully, and no more than fully, warrantable according to the latest figures of population--say 70.]

2. Inclusion in full numbers for limited purposes.

3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. [By "reduced numbers" I mean in numbers less than population would warrant.]

4. Inclusion in reduced numbers for limited purposes.

Now (4) I only set out for symmetry. It has never been proposed by anybody, and hardly needs notice.

The three others are alike in two respects--that they leave untouched the question of representation in the House of Lords, and that they directly infringe both the Federal principle and the Union principle by giving representation, both in a unitary and a subordinate Legislature, to one portion of the realm.

Let us look at No. 1--inclusion in full numbers for all purposes. This was Mr. Gladstone's revised proposal of 1893, and it formed part of the Bill thrown out by the Lords. The number of Irish Members was to have been 80. But reduction, as Mr. Gladstone admitted, would scarcely affect the inherent difficulties of inclusion. Nor must it be forgotten that reduction from 103 to 70 can be justified only by the concession of a large measure of Home Rule. It is one of the paradoxes of an unnatural Union that, over-represented as Ireland is, she has not now power enough to secure her own will. To reduce her numbers, while retaining large powers over Irish affairs at Westminster, would be unjust. For the time being I shall defer the consideration of those powers, and argue the matter on broad principle, assuming that the powers retained in Imperial hands are small enough to warrant a reduction from 103 to 70.

Now let us apply our touchstone to this question of inclusion in "full" numbers. Will it be good for Ireland? Surely not.

(_a_) It will be bad for Ireland, in the first place, to have her energies weakened at the outset by having to find two complete sets of representatives, when she will be in urgent need of all her best men to do her own work. There is no analogy with Quebec, Victoria, Massachusetts, or Wuertemburg, which had all been accustomed to self-government before they entered their respective Federations. Ireland has to find her best men, create her domestic policies, reconstruct her administration, and the larger the reservoir of talent she has to draw from the better. When true Federation becomes practical politics it will be another matter. By that time she will have men to spare.

(_b_) More serious objection still, retention in full numbers will, it is to be feared, tend to counteract the benefits of Home Rule in Ireland by keeping alive old dissensions and bad political habits. If, after long and hot controversy, a system is set up under which Great Britain can still be regarded as a pacificator--half umpire and half policeman--of what Peel called the "warring sects" of Ireland, it is to be feared that the Members sent to London may fall into the old unnatural party divisions; a Protestant minority seeking to revoke or curtail Home Rule, and a Nationalist majority--paradoxical survival of a pre-national period--seeking to maintain or enlarge Home Rule. These unhappy results would react in their turn upon the Irish Legislature, impairing the value of Home Rule, and making Ireland, as of old, the cockpit of sectarian and sentimental politics. The same results would have happened if, simultaneously with the concession of Home Rule to Canada, Australia and South Africa, these Colonies had been given representation in the British Parliament.

(_c_) Whatever the extent of the danger I have indicated, inclusion in full numbers will tend to keep alive the habit of dependence on Great Britain for financial aid, a habit so ingrained, through no fault of Ireland's, that it will be difficult to break if the Parliamentary leverage is left intact. If ever there was a country which needed, as far as humanly possible, to be thrown for a time--not necessarily for a long time--upon its own resources, it is Ireland. Every other self-governing Colony in the Empire has gone through that bracing and purifying ordeal, accepting from the Mother Country, without repayment, only the loan of military and naval defence, and Ireland can imitate them without dishonour.

What is bad for Ireland is sure to be bad for Great Britain, too, and the bad effect in this case is sufficiently apparent. Imagine the result if Quebec, besides having her own Legislature and her own representatives in the Dominion Parliament, were to be represented also in the Ontario Legislature. Ireland, besides controlling her own affairs, free from British interference, would have a voice in British affairs, and sometimes a deciding voice. "If you keep the Irish in," said Mr. John Morley in 1886--and he meant in their full numbers--"they will be what they have ever been in the past--the arbitrators and masters of English policy, of English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British administrations." That is a rather exaggerated account of the past, for had it been literally true Ireland would have had Home Rule long ago; and it was unduly pessimistic about the future, for it hardly made sufficient allowance for a change in Irish spirit as a result of Home Rule; but there is a truth in the words which everybody recognizes and whose recognition is one of the great motive forces behind Home Rule. Even a total change in Irish sentiments and parties would not remove the danger, and might intensify it by producing at Westminster a solid instead of, as at present, a divided, Irish vote. It would be truer, perhaps, to say what I said above, that retention of Members would tend to stereotype Irish parties and the mutual antipathy of Ireland and Great Britain.

2. Inclusion in full numbers (say 70) for limited purposes. This (with the figure of 80) was Mr. Gladstone's original proposal of 1893, and it took the form of a clause known as the "In and Out Clause," which purported to divide all Parliamentary business into Imperial, Irish, and non-Irish business, and to give Irish Members the right to vote only on Imperial and Irish subjects. Mr. Gladstone never disguised his view that a sound classification was impracticable, and put forward the clause, frankly, as a tentative scheme for the discussion of the House. Like its successor, the "Omnes omnia" Clause, it was riddled with criticism, and it was eventually withdrawn. Without investigating details, the reader will perceive at once the hopeless confusion arising from an attempt to inject a tincture of Federalism into a unitary Parliament, forming part of an unwritten Constitution of great age and infinite delicacy. It is not merely that it is absolutely impossible to distinguish rigidly between Imperial, Irish, and British business. The great objection is that there would be two alternating majorities in an Assembly which is, and must be, absolutely governed by a party majority, and which, through that majority, controls the Executive. It "passed the wit of man," said Mr. Gladstone, to separate in practice the Legislative and Executive functions in the British Constitution. At present a hostile vote in the House of Commons overturns the Ministry of the day and changes the whole British and Imperial administration. A hostile vote, therefore, determined by the Irish Members, on a question affecting Ireland, such as the application to Ireland of a British Bill, would seriously embarrass the Ministry, if it did not overturn it. The log-rolling and illicit pressure which this state of things would encourage may be easily imagined. A Ministry might find itself after a General Election in the position of having a majority for some purposes and not for others. That was actually the case in 1893, when Mr. Gladstone, with a majority, including the Irish Nationalists, of only 40, was carrying his Bill through Parliament. It is actually the case now, in the sense that if the Irish Nationalists voted with the Opposition, the Ministry would be defeated. Any change for the better in Irish sentiment towards Great Britain would _pro tanto_ mitigate the difficulty, but would not remove it, and might, as I suggested above, increase it, by the creation of a solid Irish vote. 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.

3. Inclusion in reduced numbers for all purposes. By "reduced numbers" is meant numbers less than the population of Ireland warrants. For the sake of argument we may assume the number to be 35, that is, approximately half the proper proportion; but directly we desert a scientific principle of allocation, the exact figure we adopt is a matter of arbitrary choice.

Mr. Gladstone appears to have contemplated this plan for a brief period in 1889; but he dropped it. Clearly it cannot be defended on any logical grounds, but only as a compromise designed, as it avowedly was, to conciliate British opinion. It would minimize but not remove the difficulties inherent in No. 1; and so far as it did lessen these difficulties, the representation given would be impotent and superfluous. That is why I have taken it last in order of the three possible methods of inclusion. It raises in the sharpest and clearest form the important question underlying the whole of the discussion we have just been through--namely, what are to be the powers delegated to the Irish Parliament and Executive, and what are to be the powers reserved to the Imperial Parliament and Executive?

If the powers reserved are small, it will be possible to justify not merely a small Irish representation in the House of Commons, but even under certain conditions the total exclusion of Irish members. Indeed, if the figure 35 corresponded to the facts of the case, one might as well abandon these painful efforts to "conciliate British opinion," accept total exclusion, and substitute Conference for representation. If the powers reserved are large, full representation in spite of all the crushing objections to it, will be absolutely necessary, in order to safeguard Irish interests. Here is the grand dilemma, and it says little for our common sense as a nation that we should submit to be puzzled and worried by it any longer. Half the worry arises from the old and infinitely pernicious habit of regarding Ireland as outside the pale of political science, of ignoring in her case what Lord Morley has called the "fundamental probabilities of civil society." Let us break this habit once and for all and take the logical and politic course of total exclusion, with its logical and politic accompaniment, a measure of Home Rule wide enough to justify the absence of Irish representation at Westminster. That will be found to be the path both of duty and of safety.

Let it be clearly understood that lapse of time has not diminished appreciably the power of the arguments against the inclusion of Irish Members in the House of Commons. On their merits, these arguments are still unanswerable, and we had better recognize the fact. Mr. Balfour said, in 1893, "Those questions" (of representation at Westminster) "are not capable of solution, and the very fact that they are incapable of solution affords, in our opinion, a conclusive argument against the whole scheme, of which one or other of the plans in question must form a part." Speaking as a Unionist, Mr. Balfour was right, and, as Home Rulers, we should be wise to remember it.