A Leap in the Dark by A.V. Dicey

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For even the occasional presence[38]--which will in practice be the
frequent presence--of the Irish members at Westminster destroys every
hope that Ireland will be governed by her best citizens. The reasons why
this is so are various; some of them may be shortly stated. The system,
in the first place, of double representation, under which members of the
Irish Parliament must flit to and fro between Ireland and England, and
debate one day about Irish matters in Dublin, and the next about
Imperial, or in truth British, matters in England, makes it impossible
for quiet hard-working Irishmen, who carry on the real business of
Ireland, to take part in politics. The political centre of interest, in
the second place, will after, as before, the passing of the Home Rule
Bill, be placed in London and not in Dublin. The humdrum local business
which under a system of Home Rule ought to be discussed in the Irish
Parliament, may vitally concern the prosperity of every inhabitant of
Ireland, but it will not in general lend itself to oratory, or arouse
popular excitement. The questions, on the other hand, to be discussed in
the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, as, for example, whether Mr.
Gladstone or Lord Salisbury shall be head of the British Cabinet,
whether the royal veto on Irish legislation shall be exercised on the
advice of the English or of the Irish Ministry, are matters which do not
in reality greatly affect the happiness of ordinary Irishmen. But they
give room for management, for diplomacy, for rhetoric, and are certain
on occasions to arouse both the interest and the passions of the Irish
people. We may take it for granted that the character of the Irish
representation at Westminster will govern the character of the
Parliament at Dublin.[39] Hence arises a third and fatal obstacle to the
active participation in Irish public life of Irishmen who are not
professional politicians. The Home Rule Bill of 1893 professes to
restrain on every side the action of the Irish government and
Parliament. These Restrictions are the comfort of English Gladstonians;
they are thought to be safeguards, though in reality there is nothing
which they make safe. But Restrictions which delight Gladstonians are
hateful to Irish Home Rulers. Their watchword is, 'Ireland a nation.' To
this cry every Home Ruler will rally, and so too will, if once the
Union is broken up, many an ardent loyalist, converted by anger at
England's treachery into an extreme Nationalist. Irishmen will wish for
an Irish army; they will wish for a protective policy; they will desire
that Ireland shall play a part in foreign affairs, and will claim for
her at least the independence of such a colony as New Zealand. To all
these wishes, and to many more, some of which under a system of Home
Rule are quite reasonable, the terms of the Home Rule Bill are opposed.
Home Rulers, and probably enough the whole Irish people, will insist
that the Bill, which will then have become an Act, must be modified. How
is the modification to be obtained? How is Home Rule to be made a
reality? By one method only: that is, by the freest use of those arts Of
intrigue and obstruction by which Home Rule will have been gained. But
for the carrying out of such a policy the agitators and intriguers who
for the last twenty years have weakened and degraded the Imperial
Parliament are the proper agents. For this work they, and they alone,
are fit. The quiet, industrious, stay-at-home merchants or lawyers, who
might be sent to Dublin for a month or two in the year to manage Irish
business on business-like principles, will not be sent to Westminster to
hold the balance between English parties. They cannot leave their
every-day work; were they willing to forsake their own business, they
are not the men to conduct with success the parliamentary game of brag,
obstruction, and finesse. Keep, in short, the Irish members at
Westminster, and you ensure the supremacy in Ireland of professional
politicians. By a curious fatality the Gladstonian policy which weakens
England ruins Ireland. Let no one fancy that this is the delusion of an
English Unionist. Sir Gavan Duffy is an Irish Nationalist of a far
higher type than the men who have drawn money from the Clan-na-Gael. In
'48 he was a rebel, but if he was disloyal to England, he was always
careful of the honour and character of Ireland. He, at least, perceives
the danger to his country of retaining Irish members in a Parliament
where they had ceased to have any proper place. 'For my own part,' he
says, 'I should not care if they did not attend [the Imperial
Parliament] for a generation, which will be needed for the manipulation
of their own affairs.'

All this, I shall be told, is prophecy; Gladstonian hopes are as
reasonable as Unionist fears. So be it. But in this matter my
predictions have a special claim on the attention of the Ministry, they
coincide with the forecast, or the foresight, of the present[40] Chief
Secretary for Ireland.

'Let us suppose that these Irish representatives for Imperial purposes
are not chosen by the legislative body, but are chosen directly by Irish
constituencies. You have already, according to our plan, two sets of
constituencies. You have the 103 constituencies that return the popular
branch of the legislative body, and you have those other constituencies
up to seventy-five which return the elective members of the other branch
of the legislative body. You have, therefore, got already on our plan
two sets of constituencies. Now, if you are going to send members to
Westminster for Imperial purposes to the number of forty-five or to the
number of ninety-five, you must mark out a third set of
constituencies--you must have a third set of elections. A system of that
kind does not strike me at least as being exactly the thing for a
country of which we are assured that before everything else its prime
want is a profound respite from political turmoil. There are plenty of
other objections from the Irish point of view, which I am not now going
to dwell upon. Depend upon it that an Irish Legislature will not be up
to the magnitude of the enormous business that is going to be cast upon
it unless you leave all the brains that Irish public men have got to do
Irish work in Ireland. Depend upon this, too, that if you have one set
of Irish members in London it is a moral certainty that disturbing
rivalries, disturbing intrigues would spring up, and that the natural
and wholesome play of forces and parties and leaders in the Irish
Assembly would be complicated and confused and thrown out of gear by the
separate representatives of the country. All this is bad enough.'[41]

These are the words of my friend Mr. Morley.[42] They were spoken at
Newcastle on April 21, 1886. He was then, as now, responsible for the
government of Ireland. Nothing can add to their gravity; nothing can add
to their force; they were true in 1886, they remain as true to-day as
they were seven years ago.[43]

As to England.--The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is on
the face of it a gross and patent injustice to Great Britain. It is
absurd, it is monstrous, that while the Irish Parliament and the Irish
Parliament alone settle whether Mr. Healy, Mr. M'Carthy, Mr. Redmond, or
Mr. Davitt is to be head of the Irish government, and England, though
vitally interested in the character of the Irish Executive, is not to
say a word in the matter, eighty Irishmen are to help in determining,
and are often actually to determine, whether Lord Salisbury or Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain, is to be Prime Minister and
direct the policy of England. Here again 1 can rely on the invaluable
aid of Mr. Morley. He has denounced the effect on England of retaining
Irish members at Westminster with a strength of language and a weight of
authority to which it is impossible for me to make any pretension.

'But there is a word to be said about the effect on our own Parliament,
and I think the effect of such an arrangement--and I cannot help
thinking so till I hear of better arrangements--upon our own Parliament
would be worse still. It is very easy to talk about reducing the number
of the Irish members; perhaps it would not be so easy to do. It is very
easy to talk about letting them take part in some questions and not in
others, but it will be very difficult when you come to draw the line in
theory between the questions in which they shall take a part and those
in which they shall not take a part. But I do not care what precautions
you take; I do not care where you draw the line in theory; but you may
depend upon it--I predict--that there is no power on the earth that can
prevent the Irish members in such circumstances from being in the future
Parliament what they were in the past, and what to some extent they are
in the present, the arbiters and the masters of English policy, of
English legislative business, and of the rise and fall of British
Administrations. You will have weakened by the withdrawal of able men
the Legislature of Dublin, and you will have demoralized the Legislature
at Westminster. We know very well what that demoralisation means, for I
beg you to mark attentively the use to which the Irish members would
inevitably put their votes--inevitably and naturally. Those who make
most of the retention of the Irish members at Westminster are also those
who make most of there being what they call a real and effective and a
freely and constantly exercised veto at Westminster upon the doings at
Dublin. You see the position. A legislative body in Dublin passes a
Bill. The idea is that that Bill is to lie upon the table of the two
Houses of Parliament in London for forty days--forty days in the
wilderness. What does that mean? It means this, that every question that
had been fought out in Ireland would be fought out over again by the
Irish members in our Parliament. It means that the House of Lords here
would throw out pretty nearly every Bill that was passed at Dublin. What
would be the result of that? You would have the present block of our
business. You would have all the present irritation and exasperation.
English work would not be done; Irish feeling would not be conciliated,
but would be exasperated. The whole efforts of the Irish members would
be devoted to throwing their weight--I do not blame them for this--first
to one party and then to another until they had compelled the removal of
these provoking barriers, restrictions, and limitations which ought
never to have been set up. I cannot think, for my part I cannot see, how
an arrangement of that sort promises well either for the condition of
Ireland or for our Parliament. If anybody, in my opinion, were to move
an amendment to our Bill in the House of Commons in such a direction as
this, with all these consequences foreseen, I do not believe such an
amendment would find twenty supporters.'[44]

This was the opinion of Mr. John Morley in 1886. A word in it here or
there is inapplicable to the details of the present Bill; but in
principle every syllable cited by me from his Newcastle address forms
part of the Unionist argument against summoning as much as a single
Irish member to Westminster. His language is admirable, it cannot be
improved. All that any one who agrees with Mr. Morley can do in order to
force his argument home is to point out in a summary manner the ways in
which the Irish delegation at Westminster will enfeeble the Imperial
Government.

_First_. The Irish members, or rather the Irish delegation, will have a
voice and often a decisive voice in determining who are the men that
shall constitute the English Cabinet; on the Irish vote will depend
whether Conservatives, Liberals, Radicals, or Socialists shall
administer the government of England. It is vain to tell us Irish
members will be restrained, whether by law or custom, from voting on
British affairs when they will vote on the most important of all British
affairs, the composition and the character of the body which is to
govern England.

That the Irish members will thus vote on a matter of special and vital
importance to England is admitted. But things stand far worse than this.
The vote of the Irish delegation will and must be swayed by an interest
adverse to the welfare of Great Britain; for the interest of Great
Britain, or, to use ordinary language of England, is that the English
Government should be strong, and should represent the majority of the
English or British electors. The direct interest of the Irish delegation
is that the English Government should be weak, and represent the
minority of English electors. That this is so is obvious. The weaker the
British Government, the greater the weight of the Irish representatives.
But if the English Cabinet represents a minority of the British people,
and are kept in office only by the votes of their Irish allies, then the
influence of the Irish representatives and the weakness of the English
Government will have reached its extreme point. The effect therefore of
the arrangement which brings Irish members to Westminster is to place
the administration of English affairs in the hands of the party,
whichever it be, that does not represent the wishes of the English
people. This master stroke of Gladstonian astuteness ensures that
Radicals shall be in office when the opinion of England is Conservative,
and that Conservatives shall be in power when English opinion tends
towards Radicalism.

_Secondly_. The retention of the Irish members breaks up our whole
system of Cabinet government. This system has some inherent defects, but
it cannot work at all with any benefit to the country unless the Cabinet
can depend on the support of a permanent majority. The result of what
has happily been described as the 'in-and-out plan,' that is the scheme
for allowing Irish members to vote on some subjects and not on others,
will be the constitution of two majorities, and it is more than possible
that the one majority may belong to one party and the other majority to
another. Look at the effect on the transaction of public affairs. The
Irish members and the English Liberals combined may put in office a
Liberal Cabinet. On English matters, _e.g._ the question of
Disestablishment, or of Home Rule for Wales, the British majority
consisting of British members of Parliament only may constantly defeat
the Gladstonian Cabinet, and thus force into office a Conservative
Cabinet which could command a majority on all subjects of purely British
interest, but would always be in a minority on all matters of Imperial
policy, _e.g._ on the conduct of foreign affairs. Which Cabinet would
have a right to retain power? The sole answer is--neither. The proposed
plan, in short, undermines our whole scheme of government.

_Thirdly_. The Irish members who are now simply Irish members of the
Imperial Parliament will be transformed into a very different thing--an
Irish delegation. The importance of this change cannot be over-rated.
The essential merit of our present system of government is that the
Executive, no less than the Parliament of the United Kingdom, represents
the country as a whole. Our Premier may be a Scotsman, but we know of no
such thing as a Scottish Premier. Englishmen may form the majority of
the Cabinet, but we have never had an English Cabinet as contrasted with
a Scottish or an Irish Cabinet. It has never been contended, hardly has
it been hinted, that a Ministry ought to be made up of members taken in
certain proportions from each division of the kingdom. But from the
moment that sectional representation, and with it open advocacy of
sectional interests, is introduced into the House of Commons, there will
arise the necessity for the formation of sectional Cabinets.

The demand will be made, and the demand will be granted, that in the
administration no less than in the House there shall be a system of
representation; that England, that Scotland, that Ireland shall each
have their due share in the Ministry. But this state of things must be
fatal both to the capacity and to the fairness of the government. The
talent of the Cabinet will be diminished, because the Prime Minister
will no longer be able to choose as colleagues the ablest among his
supporters without reference to the now irrelevant question whether they
represent English, Scottish, or Irish constituencies. The character of
the Executive will be lowered because the Cabinet itself will represent
rival interests. It may seem that I am advocating the special claims of
England. This is not so. I am arguing on behalf of the efficiency of the
government of the United Kingdom. My argument is one to which Scotsmen
and Irishmen should give special heed. If once we have cabinets and
parties based upon sectional divisions, if we have English ministries
and English parties as opposed to Scottish ministries or Irish
ministries, and Scottish parties and Irish parties, it is not in the
long run the most powerful and wealthy portion of what is now the United
Kingdom which will suffer. It is hardly the interest of Scotsmen or
Irishmen to pursue a policy which suggests the odious but inevitable cry
'England for Englishmen.'

_Fourthly_, as long as Irish members remain at Westminster the English
Parliament will never be freed from debates about Irish affairs.

This is a point there is no need to labour. Unless (what no honest man
can openly propose) the 80 or 103 members from Ireland are to be taken
from one Irish party only, they must represent different interests and
different opinions. Some few at least will represent the wishes, the
complaints, or the wrongs of Ulster. But if this be so, it is certain
that the controversies which divide Ireland will make themselves heard
at Westminster. Can any sane man fancy that if the Dublin Parliament
passes an Act for the maintenance of order at Belfast, if the people of
Belfast are suspected of intending to resist the Irish government, if
Irish landlords, rightly or not, fear unfair treatment at the hands of
the Irish Ministry or the Irish Parliament, none of these things will be
heard of at Westminster? The supposition is incredible. Let Irish
members sit at Westminster and Irish affairs will be debated at
Westminster, and will often be debated when, under a system of Home
Rule, it were much better they should be passed over in silence. Admit,
what is not certain, that Home Rule in Ireland will occasionally
withdraw a few Irish questions from discussion in England, it must be
remembered that a new crop of Irish questions will arise. The federal
character of the new constitution must produce in one form or another
disputes and discussions as to the limits which bound the respective
authority of the Imperial and of the Irish Governments. The Imperial
Parliament will, for the first time, be harassed by the question of
State rights. Add to this that at every great political crisis the House
of Commons will have before it an inquiry which must produce
interminable debates, namely whether a given bill is or is not a measure
which concerns only the interest of Great Britain.

Two inducements are offered to England for the adoption of a plan the
evils whereof were so patent in 1886 that it then could not, if we are
to believe Mr. Morley,[45] have commanded twenty supporters in the House
of Commons.

The first inducement is that the presence of eighty Irish members at
Westminster is an outward and visible sign of the supremacy of the
Imperial Parliament.[46] On this point it is needless to say much; few
Englishmen will on consideration think it worth while to dislocate all
our system of government in order that the British Parliament may retain
in Ireland the kind of sovereignty which it retains in New Zealand. We
are rightly proud of our connection with our colonies, but no one would
seriously propose to retain nominal sovereignty in Canada at the price
of a perilous and injurious change in the constitution of England.

The second inducement is that Great Britain will be allowed the
exclusive management of British affairs.

This sort of spurious Home Rule for England turns out however to be as
illusory a blessing as the maintenance of parliamentary supremacy.

Great Britain is, under the new constitution, not allowed to appoint the
British Cabinet. Great Britain is forbidden to determine for herself any
matter of legislation or administration which, however deeply it
concerns British interests, trenches in the least degree on any Irish or
Imperial interest. Any matter of finance, which comes within the wide
head of Imperial liabilities, expenditure, and miscellaneous
revenue,[47] falls within the competence of the Irish members. Questions
of peace or war, our foreign relations, every diplomatic transaction, is
a matter on which the Irish delegation may pronounce a decision. The
conjecture is at least plausible[48] that Irish members will have a
right to discuss and vote upon any subject debated in the Parliament at
Westminster which involves the fate of a British Cabinet. Let it be
granted that, if the provisions of the Home Rule Bill be observed, no
Irish representative can vote 'on any Bill, or motion in relation
thereto, the operation of which Bill or motion is confined to Great
Britain.'[49] But then when is the operation of a Bill confined to Great
Britain, or, to use popular language, what is a British Bill? This is an
inquiry in the decision whereof the Irish members will take part. The
Irish members, therefore, at Westminster will be judges of their own
rights, and in the only cases in which it is of practical importance to
Great Britain that the Irish representatives should not vote, will be
able with the aid of a British minority to fix the limits of their own
jurisdiction.[50] Let the Irish members and a British minority boldly
vote that the operation of a Bill, say for the Disestablishment of the
English Church, is not confined to Great Britain, and they can boldly
vote that the Bill do pass, and no Court in Great Britain or the British
Empire can question the validity of a law enacted in open defiance of
the spirit or even the words of the Constitution.[51] The right of
British members to the management of even exclusively British affairs
will depend not upon the law of the land, but upon the moderation and
sense of equity which may restrain the unfairness of partisanship.

For a parliamentary minority will, if only it throw scruples to the
winds, be constantly able to transform itself into a majority by the
unconstitutional admission of the Irish vote. This is not a power which
any party, be it Conservative or Radical, English, Scottish, or Irish,
ought to possess. Partisanship knows nothing of moderation. And the
reason of this blindness to the claims of justice is that the spirit of
party combines within itself some of the best and some of the worst of
human passions. It often unites the self-sacrificing zealotry of
religious fanaticism with the recklessness of the gambling table. Let an
assailant of the Contagious Diseases Act, a fanatic for temperance, a
protectionist who believes that free trade is the ruin of the country,
an anti-vivisectionist who holds that any painful experiment on live
animals is the most heinous of sins; let any man who has come to believe
that his own credit, no less than the salvation of the country, depends
on the success of a particular party, know that the triumph of his cause
depends upon his voting that a particular measure operates beyond Great
Britain, and we know well enough in which way he will vote. He will vote
what he knows to be untrue rather than sacrifice a cause which he
believes to be sacred. He will think himself both a fool and a traitor
if he sacrifices the victory which is within his grasp to the
maintenance of technical legality, or rather to respect for a rule of
constitutional procedure.

Suppose, however, that I have underrated the equity of human nature, and
that no faction in the House of Commons ever attempts to violate the
spirit of the Constitution. The supposition is bold, not to say absurd;
but even if its reasonableness be granted, this does not suffice for the
protection of England's rights. The question whether a given Bill does
or does not operate exclusively in Great Britain may often give rise to
fair dispute, and (what should be noted) this dispute will always be
decided against Great Britain in the only instances in which its
decision is to Great Britain of any importance whatever. An example best
shows my meaning. Let a Bill be brought forward for establishing Home
Rule in Wales. Is the operation of the Bill confined to Great Britain?
An English member, unless he is a Home Ruler, will answer with an
undoubted affirmative. An English, or Irish, or Welsh Home Ruler will
with equal certainty, and equal honesty, give a negative answer. The
question admits of fair debate, but we know already how the debate will
be decided. If the Unionists constitute a majority of the House, the
Irish vote will be excluded. But in this case its exclusion is of no
practical importance. If the Unionists constitute indeed a majority of
British representatives, but do not constitute a majority of the House,
the Irish vote will be included. The Irish representatives will decide
whether Wales shall constitute a separate State, and the right of Great
Britain to manage British affairs will not prevent the dismemberment of
England. Home Rule, such as it is for England, means at best a totally
different thing from Home Rule for Ireland. In the case of England it
means a limited and precarious control of legislation for Great Britain
by British members of Parliament. In the case of Ireland it means the
real and substantial and exclusive government of Ireland by an Irish
Ministry and an Irish Parliament.

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