A Leap in the Dark by A.V. Dicey

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But will the advantage of even this modified half-and-half Home Rule be
really offered to England?

Gladstonians, it is rumoured (and before these pages are in print the
rumour may turn out to be a fact), have their own remedy for some of the
only too-patent absurdities of the 'in-and-out system' embodied in
clause 9 of the Home Rule Bill. A suggestion is made which would be
amusing for its irony, were it not revolting for its cynicism, that the
difficulty of the double majority should be removed by the allowing
members not only to remain at Westminster in their full number, but also
to vote there on all matters whatever, including those affairs which
exclusively concern the interests of Great Britain. This is no doubt a
remedy for some of the evils of an unworkable proposal. It is a cure
which to any Englishman of sense or spirit will seem tenfold worse than
the disease. It is a cure in that sense only in which a traveller may be
said to be relieved from the fear of robbery by a highwayman shooting
him dead. The irregular interference of the Irish delegation in the
formation of the British Cabinet, and other matters which indirectly
concern England, is to be regularised (if I may use the term) by
allowing to Irish members permanent despotism over England in matters
which, on a system of Home Rule, concern England alone. Irish members
may disestablish the Church of England, though England is to have no
voice in the pettiest of Irish affairs. Irish members are to be allowed
to impose taxes on England, say to double the income tax, though of
these taxes no inhabitant of Ireland will pay a penny; the Irish
delegation--and this is the worst grievance of all--is to be enabled, in
combination with a British minority, to detach Wales from England, or to
vote Home Rule for Scotland, or to federalise still further the United
Kingdom by voting that Man, Jersey, and Guernsey shall send members to
the Imperial Parliament. Note that all this may be done by the Irish
delegation, though, under the new Constitution, England will not have a
word to say on such questions as whether the right of electing members
for the Parliament at Dublin shall or shall not be extended to every
adult, or whether Ulster shall, or shall not, be allowed Home Rule of
its own. The absurdity of this policy ought to prevent its ever being
adopted; but in these days absurdity seems to tell as little against
wild schemes of legislation as their injustice.

All this consideration of haggling and trafficking between Great Britain
and Ireland is loathsome to every true Unionist who considers Englishmen
and Irishmen as still citizens of one nation. But, when Gladstonians
propose to divide the United Kingdom into two States, it is as essential
as it is painful to weigh well what is the gain of Great Britain in the
new scheme of political partnership. If the matter be looked at from
this point of view, it is easy to see how miserable are the offers
tendered to England. Compare for a moment the authority to be given her
under the new constitution with the authority she has hitherto
possessed or the authority tendered to her under the Home Rule Bill of
1886.

Up to 1782 the British Parliament held in its own hands the absolute
control not only of every British affair, but every matter of policy
affecting either Ireland or the British Empire. The British Parliament,
in which sat not a single representative of any Irish county or borough,
appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament, whenever it
thought fit, legislated for Ireland; the British Parliament controlled
the whole course of Irish legislation; every Act which passed the
Parliament of Ireland was inspected, amended, and, if the English
Ministry saw fit, vetoed in England. The system was a bad system and an
unjust system. It is well that it ended. But as regarded the control of
the British Empire it corresponded roughly with facts. The Empire was in
the main the outcome of British energy and British strength, and the
British Empire was governed by Great Britain.

The constitution of 1782 gave legislative independence to Ireland, but
did not degrade the British Parliament to the position which will be
occupied by the Imperial Parliament under the constitution of 1893. The
British Parliament remained supreme in Great Britain; the British
Parliament controlled the Imperial policy both of England and of
Ireland. The British Parliament, or rather the British Ministry,
virtually appointed the Irish Executive. The British Parliament
renounced all rights to legislate for Ireland[52]; the British
Parliament technically possessed no representatives in the Parliament
at Dublin. But any one who judges of institutions not by words but by
facts will perceive that in one way or another the influence and the
wishes of the British Government were represented more than sufficiently
in the Irish Houses of Parliament. Grattan's constitution, in short,
left the British Parliament absolutely supreme in all British and
Imperial affairs, and gave to the British Ministry predominating weight
in the government of Ireland. This is a very different thing from the
shadowy sovereignty which the English Parliament retains, but abstains
from exercising, in our self-governing colonies. It is a very different
thing from the nominal power to legislate for Ireland which the new
constitution confers upon the Imperial Parliament.

Since the Union England and Ireland have been politically one nation.
The Imperial or British Government has controlled, and the Imperial
Parliament has passed laws for, the whole country. Nor has the presence
of the Irish members till recent days substantially limited the
authority of Great Britain. Till 1829 the Protestant landlords of
Ireland who were represented in the Imperial Parliament shared the
principles or the prejudices of English landowners. Since the granting
of Catholic emancipation Roman Catholic or Irish ideas or interests have
undoubtedly perplexed or encumbered the working of British politics.
But the representatives of Ireland have been for the most part divided
between the two great English parties, and it was not till Mr. Parnell's
influence united the majority of Irish representatives into a party
hostile to Great Britain that any essential evil or inconvenience
resulted from their presence at Westminster. This inconvenience,
whatever its extent, has been the price of the Union. The gain has been
worth the payment: the action of Parliament has been hampered, but its
essential and effective authority throughout the realm has been
maintained.

In 1886 Mr. Gladstone framed a constitution which was meant to be a
final and a just settlement of the questions at issue between England
and Ireland. Under the constitution of 1886 Great Britain surrendered to
Ireland about the same amount of independence as is offered her under
the proposed constitution of 1893. But the difference in the position of
Great Britain under the two constitutions is immense.

Under the constitution of 1886 Great Britain was offered a position of
the highest authority.

To the British Parliament (in which was to sit not a single Irish
member) was to fall the appointment of the British or Imperial Ministry.
The British Parliament received absolute control of all British,
colonial, Imperial, and foreign affairs. Perfect unity was restored to
the spirit of her government, and predominance in the British, or, to
use ordinary language, in the English, Parliament was given to the
conservative elements of English society. Great Britain became mistress
in her own home; she became much more than this; she was enthroned as
undisputed sovereign of the British Empire.[53]

Under the constitution, in short, of 1886, if Great Britain was weakened
on one side she was strengthened on another. Her Parliament obtained an
immense accession of authority, and was all but entirely freed both from
the necessity for considering Irish questions and from the damage of
Irish obstruction. Ireland surrendered to England all share in the
government of the Empire, and the further dismemberment of Great Britain
without the assent of the British people became difficult, if not
impossible. It does not lie in the mouth of Gladstonians to say that the
measure of 1886 was unjust. It was laid before the country as a
compromise which was just to England and to Ireland. The Irish leaders,
we were told, accepted the proposal, just as we are told that they
accept the proposed constitution of 1893. If the acceptance was honest,
then in 1886 they agreed to a bargain far more favourable to England
than the contract now pressed on our acceptance. If their acquiescence
was a mere pretence, what trust can we place in the assertion that they
accept the arrangement of 1893?

However this may be, it is clear that England is now offered a position
of weakness and of inferiority such as she has never occupied during the
whole course of her history. What is the meaning or justification of the
proposed surrender by England of every compensation for Irish Home Rule
which was offered her in 1886?

For this surrender Gladstonians assign but two reasons.

The presence of the Irish members at Westminster is, it is said, a
concession to the wishes of Unionists.

This plea, even were it supported by the facts of the case, would be
futile. It might pass muster with disputants in search of a verbal
triumph, but to any man seriously concerned for the welfare of the
nation must appear childishly irrelevant. The welfare of the State
cannot turn upon the neatness of a _tu quoque_; retorts are not reasons,
and had every Unionist, down from the Duke of Devonshire to the present
writer, pressed in 1886 for the retention of the Irish members at
Westminster, the controversial inexpertness of the Unionists seven years
ago would not diminish the dangers with which, under a system of Home
Rule, the presence of the Irish members at Westminster actually
threatens England. But the plea, futile as it is, is not supported by
fact. It rests on a misrepresentation of the Unionist position in 1886.

'The case in truth stands thus:--Mr. Gladstone was [in 1886] placed in
effect in this dilemma: "If you do not," said his opponents, "retain the
Irish representatives at Westminster, the sovereignty of the British
Parliament will be, under the terms of your Bill, no more than a name;
if you do retain them, Great Britain will lose the only material
advantage offered her in exchange for the local independence of
Ireland." Gladstonians, in substance, replied that the devices embodied
in the Government of Ireland Bill at once freed the British Parliament
from the presence of the Parnellites and safeguarded the sovereignty of
the British, or (for in this matter there was some confusion) of the
Imperial Parliament. On the latter point issue was joined. The other
horn of the dilemma fell out of sight, and some Unionists, rightly
believing that the Bill as it stood did not preserve the supremacy of
the British Parliament, pressed the Ministry hard with all the
difficulties involved in the removal of the Irish members. In the heat
of debate speeches were, I doubt not, delivered in which the argument
that you could not, as the Bill stood, remove the Irish members from
Westminster and keep the British Parliament supreme in Ireland, was
driven so far as to sound like an argument in favour of, at all costs,
allowing members from Ireland to sit in the English Parliament. Those
who appeared to fall into this error were, it must be noted, but a
fraction of the Unionist Party, and their mistake was little more than
verbal. When the Ministry maintained that the removal of the Irish
members from Westminster was a main feature of their Home Rule policy,
opponents naturally insisted upon the defects of the scheme laid before
them, and did not insist on the equal or greater defects of a plan which
the Government did not advocate. Mr. Gladstone, we are now told, has
changed his position, and assents to the principle that Ireland must be
represented in the British Parliament. If this assent be represented as
a concession to the demands of Unionists, my reply is that it is no such
thing. It is merely the acceptance of a different horn of an
argumentative dilemma. Grant for the sake of argument (what is by no
means certain) that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament is really
saved. The advantage offered to England in exchange for Home Rule is
assuredly gone. My friend, Mr. John Morley, used to argue in favour of
Home Rule from the necessity of freeing the English Parliament from
Parnellite obstruction. As a matter of curiosity, I should like to know
what he thinks of a concession which strikes his strongest argumentative
weapon out of his hands. My curiosity will be satisfied on the same day
which tells us Lord Spencer's reflections on the surrender of the policy
represented by the Land Purchase Bill. Meanwhile, I know well enough the
thoughts of every Unionist who is not tied by the exigencies of his
political antecedents or utterances. To say that in the eyes of such a
man the proposed concession is worthless, is to say far too little. It
is not a concession which he rates at a low price; it is a proposal
which he heart and soul condemns.'[54]

These words were not written to meet the present condition of the
controversy; they were published in 1887 at a time when no Gladstonian,
except Mr. Gladstone (if indeed he were an exception), knew whether the
retention in the Parliament at Westminster, or the exclusion from the
Parliament at Westminster, of the Irish members, was an essential
principle of Home Rule.

England again, it is alleged, suffers without murmuring all the
inconvenience caused by the Irish vote at Westminster; and she may well,
under a system of Home Rule, bear without complaint evils which she has
tolerated for near a century.

The answer to this reasoning is plain. It is a sorry plea indeed for a
desperate innovation that it leaves the evils of the existing state of
things no worse than they now are. For the sake of the maintenance of
the Union, which Unionists hold of inestimable value, England has borne
the inconvenience caused to her by the Irish vote. It argues simplicity,
or impudence, to urge that England should continue to bear the
inconvenience when the national unity is sacrificed for the sake of
which it was endured. But the reply does not stop here. The presence of
Irish members at Westminster under the new constitution increases and
stereotypes the evils, whatever their extent, now resulting from the
existence of 103 Irish members in the House of Commons. The evils are
increased because the Irish members are turned into a delegation from
the Irish State, and their action ceases to be influenced, as it now is,
by the consideration--a very important one--that the Imperial Parliament
not only in theory but in fact legislates for Ireland, and that the
English Cabinet controls the Irish administration and directs the course
of political promotion in Ireland. The sentiment and the interest of the
Irish members will be changed. Whether they come from North or South
they will be representatives of Ireland, and will naturally and rightly
consider themselves agents bound in every case to make the best bargain
they can for Ireland as against the United Kingdom, or, in plain
language, as against England. They will no longer feel it their interest
to keep in power the English party which they think will best govern
Ireland, for with the government of Ireland the Imperial Parliament
will, as long as the new constitution stands, have no practical concern.
No honest Home Ruler supposes that, if the Home Rule Bill passes into
law, the Imperial Parliament will, even should the tragedy of the
Phoenix Park be repeated in some more terrible form, pass a Crimes Act
for Ireland; to the Irish Government will belong the punishment of Irish
crime. No interest will therefore restrain the Irish delegation from
swaying backwards and forwards between the two English parties, in
order to obtain from the one or the other some momentary advantage, or
some lucrative concession, to the Irish people. Intrigue will be
pardonable, diplomatic finesse will become a duty. This evil no doubt in
some degree exists, but under the present state of things it admits of
diminution. A just redistribution of the franchise will undoubtedly
lessen the number of Ireland's representatives, whilst it will increase
the relative importance, if not the actual numbers, of loyalists in the
representation of Ireland. The gradual settlement of the land question,
as Unionists believe, will further strike at the true root of Irish
discontent, and in removing the true grievance of the Irish tenants will
diminish the strength of the party which depends for its power on the
revolutionary elements in Irish society. But all chance of mitigating
the inconvenience inflicted upon England by the presence of the Irish
members vanishes for ever when they are changed into an Irish
delegation, and are compelled by their position to be the mere
mouthpiece of Ireland's claims against England.

The alleged reasons for the weakening of England are untenable, and,
were they tenfold stronger than they are, could not remove the flagrant
contradiction between the Gladstonian policy of 1886 and the Gladstonian
policy of 1893.

But a contradiction which cannot be removed may be explained.

The withdrawal of the Irish members from Westminster might give Ireland
the chance of obtaining some of the benefits, and compensate England for
some of the evils, of Home Rule. But however this may be, one result it
would produce with certainty; it would dash the Gladstonian party to
pieces. The friends of Disestablishment, the Welsh, or the Scottish,
Home Rulers, the London Socialists, all the revolutionists throughout
the country, know that with the departure of the Irish representatives
from Westminster their own hopes of triumph must be indefinitely
postponed. England is the stronghold of British conservatism, and an
arrangement which leaves the fate of England in the hands of Englishmen
may be favourable to reform, but is fatal to revolution. Has this fact
arrested the attention of Gladstonians? I know not. It is an unfortunate
coincidence that the least defensible portion of an indefensible policy
should, while it threatens ruin to England, offer temporary salvation to
the party who rally round Mr. Gladstone.[55]

C. _The Powers of the Irish Government_

I. _The Irish Executive_. At the head of the Irish Executive will
nominally stand the Lord Lieutenant; he will however in reality occupy
the position of a colonial Governor, and be, for most purposes, little
more than the ornamental figure-head of the Irish Administration. The
real executive government of Ireland[56] must be a parliamentary
Ministry or Cabinet[57] chosen in effect, though not in name, by the
Irish Parliament, or rather by the Irish Legislative Assembly, or House
of Commons, just as the English Cabinet is appointed in effect by the
English House of Commons. Allowing then for the occasional intervention
of the Lord Lieutenant as the representative of the Imperial Parliament
to protect either the interests of the Empire or the special rights of
the United Kingdom,[58] the Irish Ministry is to occupy in Ireland the
position which the New Zealand Ministry occupies in New Zealand, and
will for most purposes as truly govern Ireland as the New Zealand
Ministry governs New Zealand, or as Mr. Gladstone's Ministry governs
England. The Irish Ministry will be the true Government of Ireland.

This is a fact to which the attention of the English public ought to be
sedulously directed. The creation of an independent Irish Parliament
strikes the imagination; it is seen to be an innovation of primary
importance. The creation of an independent Irish Cabinet or Ministry is
taken as a matter of course, and neither Unionists nor Gladstonians see
its full import. Yet in Ireland, as elsewhere, the character of the
Executive is of more practical consequence than the character of the
Legislature. A country may dispense, for a long time, with legislation;
no country can dispense with good government.

This principle holds good even in an orderly country such as England,
where the sphere of the administration is far less extended than it is
in most States. We might get on for a good while prosperously enough
without a Parliament, or without new laws, but if anything deprived us
even for a week of an Executive, or if, for any reason, the whole spirit
of the public administration were changed, every Englishman would feel
this portentous revolution in every concern of his daily life. The
protection of the Government, of the army, of the police, of the law
courts, are with us so much matters of course, that we never realise how
much the comfort and prosperity of our existence hang upon it, nor do we
reflect that the aid we derive from the Courts is in the last instance
dependent upon the decisions of the judges being actively supported by
the forces at the command of the executive power. Again, we are so used
to the preservation on the part of the Executive and the Courts of an
attitude of perfect impartiality and to the extension of their aid to
all citizens alike, that we can hardly even in imagination conceive what
would be the condition of things if the public administration favoured
particular classes and looked askance on the rights of one class, whilst
it enforced with rigour the rights of another. Yet events which have
been passing before our eyes may show any one how absolutely dependent
we may be, at any moment, for our enjoyment of life, property, or
freedom upon the authority and the equity of the Executive. Consider the
strike at Hull. Practically the legal rights and personal freedom of
every inhabitant of the city depend upon the action of the Government.
It is as plain as day that if the Government had taken actively and
unfairly the side of one party or the other to the contest, the party
which the Government favoured would at once have won. Suppose, though
the supposition is a very improbable one, that the Home Secretary had
directed the police to put down every form of picketing and to arrest
every one who counselled the free labourers to desert their employment,
the strike would come at once to an end. Suppose on the other hand--the
supposition is also a wild one--that the Home Secretary had declined to
protect the rights of the free labourers, that the troops had been
withdrawn, and that the police had been inactive; suppose, in short,
that the Government had been careless to maintain order. The Trade
Unionists would at once have become supreme, and freedom of contract, as
well as liberty of person, would have been at once abolished. Even in
England then the power to exercise our rights as citizens has its source
in the constant, though unobserved, intervention of the executive power.
What is true of England is truer still of countries where the sphere of
the administration is more widely extended than with us, and what is
true of every civilised country is truest of all of Ireland. Ireland is
a country where the sphere of the administration is large, and where it
will probably be increased. Ireland is divided by hostile factions not
too much prone to respect the law. Even as things stand, the Irish
Executive finds it hard enough to hold a perfectly even and level
course, and the whole state of the country depends upon the spirit in
which the law is enforced. One of the very gravest defects of our
present system is that in Ireland a change of government means, to a
certain extent, a change in the administration of the law. Yet both Mr.
Balfour and Mr. Morley have enforced the law, and have meant, according
to their lights, to act towards all citizens with equitable
impartiality. And Mr. Balfour, Mr. Morley, or any statesman appointed by
the Imperial Parliament, is likely to act with more fairness than at the
present moment would any Executive chosen by any Irish Parliament. One
thing, at any rate, is certain. An independent Irish Executive will
possess immense power. It will be able by mere administrative action or
inaction, without passing a single law which infringes any Restriction
to be imposed by the Irish Government Act, 1893, to effect a revolution.
Let us consider for a moment a few of the things which the Irish Cabinet
might do if it chose. It might confine all political, administrative, or
judicial appointments to Nationalists, and thus exclude Loyalists from
all positions of public trust. It might place the Bench,[59] the
magistracy, the police wholly in the hands of Catholics; it might, by
encouragement of athletic clubs where the Catholic population were
trained to the use of arms, combined with the rigorous suppression of
every Protestant association suspected, rightly or not, of preparing
resistance to the Parliament at Dublin, bring about the arming of
Catholic and the disarming of Protestant Ireland, and, at the same time,
raise a force as formidable to England as an openly enrolled Irish army.
But the mere inaction of the Executive might in many spheres produce
greater results than active unfairness. The refusal of the police for
the enforcement of evictions would abolish rent throughout the country.
And the same result might be attained by a more moderate course. Irish
Ministers might in practice draw a distinction between 'good' landlords
and 'bad' landlords, and might grant the aid of the police for the
collection of reasonable, though refusing it for the collection of
excessive rents, and might at last magnanimously recognise the virtues
of Mr. Smith-Barry, whilst passing a practical sentence of outlawry on
Lord Clanricarde. Is there anything absurd or unreasonable in the
supposition that a Ministry of Land Leaguers chosen by a Parliament of
Nationalists should attempt to enforce the unwritten law of the Land
League? A Gladstonian who answers this question in the affirmative
entertains a far lower opinion than can any candid Unionist of Mr.
Gladstone's Irish allies. It would be the grossest unfairness to suggest
that every man convicted of conspiracy by the Special Commission added
to criminality and recklessness a monstrous form of hypocrisy, and that,
whilst urging Irish peasants to boycott evictors and land-grabbers, he
felt no genuine moral abhorrence of evictions and land-grabbing. But if,
as is certainly the case, the founders of the Land League really
detested the existing system of land tenure, and considered a landlord
who exacted rent a criminal, and a tenant who paid it a caitiff, it is
as certain as anything can be that they will be under the greatest
temptation, not to say, in their own eyes, under a stringent moral
obligation, to strain the power of an Irish Executive for the purpose of
abolishing the payment of rent. Nothing, at any rate, will seem to an
Irish Ministry more desirable than that within three years[60] from the
passing of the Bill landlords and tenants should come to an arrangement,
and nothing is more likely to produce this result than the withdrawal
from the landlords of the aid, if not the protection, of the law. My
argument, however, at the present point does not require the assertion
or the belief that an Irish Ministry will be guilty of every act of
oppression which it can legally commit. All that I insist upon is that
an Irish Ministry will exercise immense power, and that without
violating a letter of the constitution, and without passing a single act
which any Court whatever could treat as void, the Ministry will be able
to change the social condition of Ireland. The Irish Cabinet, remember,
will not be checked by any Irish House of Commons, for it will represent
the majority of that House. It will not need to fear the interposition
of the Imperial Ministry or the Imperial Parliament, for if the
authorities in England are to supervise and correct the conduct of the
Irish Cabinet, Home Rule is at an end. Mr. Asquith has repudiated all
idea of creating two Executives in Ireland[61] for the ordinary purposes
of government, and from his own point of view he is right. The notion of
a dual control is preposterous; the attempt to carry it out must involve
anarchy or revolution. The Irish Ministry must in ordinary matters be at
least as free as the Ministry of a self-governing colony. The
independence of the Irish Executive is indeed a totally new phenomenon
in Irish history, and is, as I have said, a far more important matter
than the independence of the Irish Parliament, but it is an essential
feature of Home Rule, and every elector throughout England should try to
realise its import.

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