England's Case Against Home Rule by Albert Venn Dicey

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[Sidenote: Criticism]

The only way of meeting the historical argument, containing as it does
admitted truth, and supported as it is by high authorities, is to survey
the broad phenomena of Irish history, and see what are the inferences
which they warrant.[9] Whoever wishes to derive instruction from the
melancholy history of the kingdom of Ireland must, as has already been
intimated, rid himself from the delusions caused in the domain of
history by personification. He must dismiss the notion that England and
Ireland are persons to be charged with individual and continuous
responsibility for the crimes or follies of past ages. He must check the
natural but misguiding tendency of the human mind to imagine that in
national affairs when anything goes wrong you can always, or indeed
generally, lay your finger upon some definite assignable wrong-doer,
that is, upon some man or some men who can be held responsible for
political calamities or errors, as a murderer may be held guilty of
murder, or a robber of theft. A calm critic should also reflect on the
profound truth of the dictum (attributed by the way to an Irishman) that
"history is at best but an old almanack," and, while not entertaining
any great hope that antiquarian research can afford much direct guidance
as to the proper mode of arranging the future relations between England
and Ireland, remember that the most salutary function of the study of
the past is to tone down those historical animosities which derive their
bitterness from the ignorant habit of trying the actors in bygone scenes
by moral laws to which they are not justly amenable. The moral function
of an historian is to diminish the hatreds which divide nation from
nation and class from class; such as at the present moment do more to
prevent real unity between the inhabitants of the two islands making up
the United Kingdom than do unjust laws or vicious institutions. To a
student who regards with philosophic calmness a topic which has mainly
been dealt with by politicians or agitators, it easily becomes apparent
that the crimes or failures of England, no less than the vices or
miseries of England, have to a great extent flowed from causes too
general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of
rulers or of subjects.

One fact thrusts itself upon the attention of any serious student
England and Ireland have from the commencement of their ill-starred
connection been countries standing on different levels or at different
stages of civilization; they have moreover been countries impelled by
the force of circumstances towards a different development. Englishmen
forget, or (more strictly speaking) have never understood, how
exceptional has been the path pursued by English civilization; they do
not realise to themselves that the gradual transformation of an
aristocratic and feudal society into a modern industrial State which
still retains the forms, and in many points of view the spirit of
feudalism is a process which, although owing to the most special
circumstances it has been accomplished with success in England, has
hardly a parallel in any other European country. Ireland on the other
hand has, despite the deviations from her natural course caused by her
connection with a powerful nation, tended to follow the lines of
progress pursued by continental countries, and notably by France. A
foreign critic like De Beaumont finds it far easier than could any
Englishman to enter into the condition of Ireland, and this not only
because he is as a foreigner delivered from the animosities or
partialities which must in one way or another warp every English
judgment, but mainly because the phenomena which puzzle an Englishman,
as for example the passion of Irish peasants for the possession of
land,[10] are from his own experience familiar and appear natural to a
Frenchman. What to the mind of a foreign observer needs explanation is
the social condition of England rather than of Ireland. He at any rate
can see at a glance that the relation between the two countries has
planted and maintained in Ireland an aristocracy, aristocratic
institutions, and above all an aristocratic land law, foreign to the
traditions and opposed to the interests of the mass of the people. Let
an observer for a moment take up the point of view natural to a
continental critic, and admit, in the language of De Beaumont, that the
primary radical and permanent cause of Irish misery has been the
maintenance in Ireland by England of a "bad aristocracy,"[10] or, to put
the same thing more generally, and it may be more fairly that the vice
of the connection between the two countries has consisted in its being a
relation of peoples standing at different stages of civilization and
tending towards different courses of development. Here you find the
original source of a thousand ills, and hence especially have originated
four potent causes of the condition of things which now tries the
patience and overtaxes the resources of English statesmanship.

First,--The English constitution has both from its form and from its
spirit caused in past times, and even at the present day causes as much
evil to Ireland as it has conferred, or does confer, benefit upon
England.[11]

The assailants of popular government point to the misrule of Ireland as
a proof that the Parliamentary system is radically vicious. They do not
prove their point, because the calamities of Ireland afford no evidence
whatever that England, which has been more prosperous for a greater
length of time than any other nation in Europe, has essentially suffered
from the power of the English Parliament. What these critics do prove is
that a representative assembly is a bad form of government for any
nation or class whom it does not represent, and they establish to
demonstration that a parliamentary despotism may well be a worse
government for a dependency than a royal despotism. This is so for two
reasons. The rule of Parliament has meant in England government by
parties; and whatever be the merits of party spirit in a free,
self-governed country, its calamitous defects, when applied to the
administration of a dependency, are patent. Down to 1782 Ireland was
avowedly subject to the despotism or sovereignty of the British
Parliament, and at every turn the interest of the country was sacrificed
to the exigencies of English politics Between 1782 to 1800 the nominal
independence of Ireland placed a check on the power of the English
Parliament, yet in substance the English executive, controlled as it was
by the Parliament at Westminster, remained the ultimate sovereign of the
kingdom of Ireland. If Pitt could have carried the King and the English
Parliament with him, he would, in spite of any opposition at Dublin by
the adherents of Ascendancy, have emancipated the Catholics, just as,
when backed by the King and the English Parliament, he did, in the face
of strenuous opposition in Ireland, pass the Act of Union. And even at
the present day the most plausible charge which can be brought against
the working of the Act of Union is that Ireland under it fails to obtain
the full benefit of the British constitution, and that in spite of her
hundred representatives she is not for practical purposes represented at
Westminster in the same sense as is Middlesex or Midlothian. A
Parliament again is less capable than a King of compensating for the
evils of tyranny by the benefit of good administration, and here we come
across a matter hardly to be understood by any one who has not with some
care compared the action and the spirit of English and of continental
administrative systems. It is hardly an exaggeration to assert that even
now we have in the United Kingdom nothing like what foreigners mean by
an administration. We know nothing of that official hierarchy which on
the Continent represents the authority of the State.[12] Englishmen are
accustomed to consider that institutions under which the business of the
country is carried on by unconnected local bodies, such as the
magistrates in quarter session, or the corporations of boroughs,
controlled in the last resort only by the law courts, ought to be the
subject of unqualified admiration. Foreign observers might, even as
regards England itself, have something to set off against the merits of
a system which is, if the apparent contradiction of terms may be
excused, no system at all, and might point out that in continental
countries the administration may often be the intelligent guide and
protector of the weak and needy. The system complimented by the name of
self-government, even if as beneficial for England as Englishmen are
inclined without absolute proof to believe, is absolutely unsuitable for
a country harassed by religious and social feuds, where the owners of
land are not and cannot be the trusted guides of the people. An
impartial official is a better ruler than a hostile or distrusted
landowner, and any one who bears in mind the benefits conferred by the
humanity and justice of Turgot on a single province of France may,
without being any friend of despotism, hold that in the last century
Ireland suffered greatly from a scheme of government which did not allow
of administration such as Turgot's. In some respects the virtues of
Englishmen have been singularly unfavourable to their success in
conciliating the goodwill of Ireland. It will always remain a paradox
that the nation which has built up the British Empire (with vast help,
it may be added, from Ireland) has combined extraordinary talent for
legislation with a singular incapacity for consolidating subject races
or nations into one State. The explanation of the paradox lies in the
aristocratic sentiment which has moulded the institutions of England. An
aristocracy respects the rights of individuals, but an aristocracy
identifies right with privilege, and is based on the belief in the
inequality of men and of classes. Privilege is the keynote of English
constitutionalism; the respect for privileges has preserved English
freedom, but it has made England slower than any other civilized country
to adopt ideas of equality. This love of privilege has vitiated the
English administration in Ireland in more ways than one. The whole
administration of the country rested avowedly down to 1829, and
unavowedly to a later period, on the inequality of Catholics and
Protestants, and Protestant supremacy itself meant (except during the
short rule of Cromwell)[13] not Protestant equality, but Anglican
privilege. The spirit which divided Ireland into hostile factions
prevented Englishmen who dwelt in England from treating as equals
Englishmen who settled in Ulster. When the Volunteers claimed Irish
independence, and the American colonists renounced connection with the
mother country, similar effects were produced by the same cause. In each
case English colonists revolted against England's sovereignty, because
it meant the privilege of Englishmen who dwelt in Great Britain to
curtail the rights and hamper the trade of Englishmen who dwelt abroad.
For the iniquitous restrictions on the trade of Ireland, which are
morally by far the most blameworthy of the wrongs inflicted by England
upon Irishmen, were not precisely the acts of deliberate selfishness
which they seem to modern critics. The grievance under which Ireland
suffered was in character the same as the grievances in respect of trade
inflicted on the American colonies. Yet but for the insane attempt to
subject the colonists to direct taxation by the English Parliament the
War of Independence might have been long deferred. Even the sufferers
from a vicious commercial policy did not see its essential iniquity, and
it is hardly a subject for wonder that a generation of Englishmen who
supposed themselves to gain greatly by controlling or extinguishing the
colonial or the Irish trade should not have recognised the full iniquity
of a policy which in itself hardly seemed intolerable to many of those
colonists who endured the wrong. Still less can we be surprised that
Englishmen a century ago, amid a world where the idea of human equality
was not as yet recognised, should have failed to perceive what many
Englishmen it may be suspected will hardly admit at present, that to
most men equality, i.e. the treatment of all subjects by their
government on similar principles, seems a form of justice, and that the
multitude will tolerate restrictions on their freedom far more easily
than offences against their sense of equality. No one will care to deny
that French Governments have at all periods been far more despotic than
the Government of England; but few persons who have given the matter a
thought can deny that France has shown a power quite unknown to
Englishmen of attaching to herself by affection countries which she has
annexed by force. Strasburg was stolen from Germany, yet Strasburg soon
became French in heart. Belgium and the Rhine Provinces would gladly
have remained parts of the Napoleonic Empire. Savoy annexed in 1859
showed no disposition to separate from France in 1870. The explanation
of these facts is not far to seek. When France annexes a country she may
govern it well or ill, but she governs it on the same principles as the
rest of the French dominions. Englishmen found it for centuries
impossible to govern Englishmen in Ireland or Englishmen in
Massachusetts exactly as if they were Englishmen in Middlesex. It is not
uninstructive that every French Assembly since the Revolution has
included Deputies from the colonies; no colony has ever sent a member to
the Parliament at Westminster.

Secondly,--The English connection has inevitably, and therefore without
blame to anyone, brought upon Ireland the evils involved in the
artificial suppression of revolution.

The crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for
the fundamental disorganisation of society. The issue of a revolutionary
struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionised
state. So strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any European
country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance
will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power
which by securing the safety, at last gains the attachment, of the
people. The Reign of Terror begets the Empire; even wars of religion at
last produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron
uniformity of despotism. Could Ireland have been left for any lengthened
period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country
would in all probability have been established. Whether Protestants or
Catholics would have been the predominant element in the State; whether
the landlords would have held their own, or whether the English system
of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with
native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have
established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or
whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been
sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain
speculation. A conclusion which, though speculative, is far less
uncertain is, that Ireland if left absolutely to herself would have
arrived like every other country at some lasting settlement of her
difficulties. To the establishment of such a reign of order the British
connection has been fatal; revolution has been suppressed at the price
of permanent disorganisation, the descendants of colonists and natives
have not coalesced into a nation, and a country which has never known
independence has never borne the burdens or learnt the lessons of
national responsibility. Disastrous as this result has been, it is
impossible to say who it was that at any given point was to blame for
it. Had France been attached to and dependent upon a powerful neighbour,
this sovereign state must have checked the cruelties and the injustice
of the Reign of Terror. But the forcible extinction of Jacobinism by an
external power would, we can hardly doubt, have arrested the progress
and been fatal to the prosperity of France. Ireland, in short, which
under English rule has lacked good administration, has by the same rule
been inevitably prevented from attempting the cure of deeply rooted
evils by the violent though occasionally successful remedy of
revolution.

Thirdly,--From the original flaw in the connection between the two
countries has resulted, almost as it were of necessity, the religious
oppression, which, recorded as it has been in the penal laws, has become
the opprobrium of English rule in Ireland.

The monstrosity of imposing Anglican Protestantism upon a people who had
not reached the stage of development which is essential for even the
understanding of Protestant dogma, and who if left to themselves would
have adhered to Catholicism, conceals from us the strength of the pleas
to be urged in excuse of a policy which to critics of the nineteenth
century seems at least as absurd as it was iniquitous. Till towards the
close of the seventeenth century all the best and wisest men of the
most civilised nations in Europe, believed that the religion of a
country was the concern of the Government, and that a king who neglected
to enforce the "truth"--that is, his own theological beliefs--failed in
his obligations to his subjects and incurred the displeasure of Heaven.
From this point of view the policy of the Tudors must appear to us as
natural as to themselves it appeared wise and praiseworthy. That the
people of England should have been ripe for Protestantism at a time when
the people of Ireland had hardly risen to the level of Roman Catholicism
was to each country a grievous misfortune. That English Protestants of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries should in common with the whole
Christian world have believed that the toleration of religious error was
a sin, and should have acted on the belief, was a cause of immense
calamities. But inevitable ignorance is not the same thing as
wickedness.[14]

Fourthly,--To the same source as religious persecution are due the whole
crop of difficulties connected with the tenure of land.

When James I. determined that the old Brehon law was to be abolished,
and an appeal to the law of England to be brought within the reach of
every Irishman, he and his ministers meant to introduce a beneficial
reform. They hoped that out of the old tribal customs a regular system
of landowning according to the English tenure would be developed. In
forcing on this change, English statesmen felt convinced not only that
they were reformers, but that they were promoters of justice. To a
generation trained under the teaching of lawyers like Coke, and
accustomed to regard the tenure which prevailed in England as good in
itself, it must have appeared that to pass from the irregular dominion
of uncertain customs to the rule of clear, definite law, was little less
than a transition from anarchy and injustice to a condition of order and
equity. They acted in precisely the spirit of their descendants, who are
absolutely assured that the extension of English maxims of government
throughout India must be a blessing to the population of the country,
and shape their Egyptian policy upon their unwavering faith in the
benefits which European control must of necessity confer on Egyptian
fellahs. If, however, it is probable that King James meant well to his
Irish subjects, it is absolutely certain that his policy worked gross
wrong. His scheme only provided for the more powerful members of the
tribes, and took no account of the inferior members, each of whom in
their degree had an undeniable if somewhat indefinite interest in the
tribal land. Sir John Davis, who carried out the plan, seems to have
thought that he had gone quite far enough in erecting the sub-chiefs
into freeholders. It never occurred to him that the humblest member of
the tribe should, if strict justice were done, have received his
allotment out of the common territory; and the result of his settlement
accordingly was that the tribal land was cut up into a number of large
freehold estates which were given to the most important personages among
the native Irish, and the bulk of the people were reduced to the
condition of tenants at will.[15] An intended reform produced injustice,
litigation, misery, and discontent. The case is noticeable, for it is a
type of a thousand subsequent English attempts to reform and improve
Ireland. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different
from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy produced
all the evils of cruelty and malignity.

Bad administration, religious persecution, above all a thoroughly
vicious system of land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping
confiscations as to make it at any rate a plausible assertion that all
the land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been
confiscated at least thrice over,[16] are admittedly some of the causes,
if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate
difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else
than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among
large numbers of the Irish people. The existence of this disaffection,
whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series
of so-called Coercion Acts passed both before and since the Act of Union
give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless, and
as it would appear almost irrepressible, resistance in Ireland offered
by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest
inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this
opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to
deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic question for
a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at
lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges,
constables and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the
people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces
either no effect or bad effects, executed criminals are regarded as
heroes or martyrs, and jurymen or witnesses meet with the execration,
and often with the fate, of criminals. On such a point it is best to
take the judgment of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions,
from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself
free:

"_Quand vous en etes arrives a ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie
de rigueurs tous vos efforts pour retablir l'ordre et la paix seront
inutiles. En vain, pour reprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez a
votre aide toutes les severites du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez
des lois cruelles pour arreter le cours de revoltantes cruautes;
vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre delit se rattachant a ces
grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous
suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaires, proclamerez des comtes entiers
en etat de suspicion legale, violerez le principe de la liberte
individuelle, creerez des cours martiales, des commissions
extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur,
multiplierez a l'exces les executions captiales._"[17]

No advocate of Home Rule can find a clearer statement of the condition
of things with which on his view the Imperial Parliament is morally
incompetent to deal than in these words of De Beaumont's; but before we
hastily draw any inference from an undoubted fact, let us examine into
the exact nature of the fact. The opposition of Irish opinion to the law
of the land is undoubted, but the opposition is not now, and if we
appeal (as under the present argument we are appealing) to the teaching
of history never has been general opposition to law, or even general
opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is
said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A
pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere;
the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if
punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences,
atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular
opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian
questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary
conspiracy against the rights of the landowners. The White Boys of 1760,
the Steel Boys of 1772, the Right Boys of 1785, the Rockites of a few
years later, the Thrashers of 1806, the White Boys who re-appear in
1811, 1815, 1820, the Terralts of 1831, the White Feet of 1833, the
Black Feet of 1837;[18] later Ribbon men under different names, the
Boycotters or the assassins who have added a terrible sanction to the
commands of the Land League or of the National League, have each and
all been, in most cases avowedly and in every case in fact, the
vindicators or asserters of the just or unjust popular aversion to the
rights of landlords given by the law and enforced by the courts of the
land. It would be folly to assert that all popular opposition to the law
in Ireland had been connected with agrarian questions. But if we look
either to the experience of past generations, or to the transactions
passing before our eyes, we can hardly be mistaken in holding that the
main causes of disaffection have been either questions connected with
religion, or rather with the position of Roman Catholics, or disputes
connected with the possession of land.

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