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Against Home Rule (1912) by Various

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AGAINST HOME RULE

THE CASE FOR THE UNION

BY

ARTHUR J. BALFOUR, M.P.; J. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN, M.P.;
WALTER LONG, M.P.; GEORGE WYNDHAM, M.P.;
LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, M.P.; J.H. CAMPBELL, K.C., M.P.;
GERALD W. BALFOUR; THOMAS SINCLAIR;
MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY;
EARL PERCY; L.S. AMERY, M.P.; GEORGE CAVE, K.C., M.P.;
GODFREY LOCKER LAMPSON, M.P.,
&c.


WITH INTRODUCTION BY
SIR EDWARD CARSON, K.C., M.P.


AND PREFACE BY
A. BONAR LAW, M.P.


EDITED BY
S. ROSENBAUM


LONDON
FREDERICK WARNE & CO,
AND NEW YORK
1912

IRISH ESSAYS COMMITTEE

Chairman.
THE RT. HON. SIR EDWARD CARSON, M.P.

Vice-Chairman.
GODFREY LOCKER LAMPSON, M.P.

Committee.
L.S. AMERY, M.P.
GEORGE CAVE, K.C., M.P.
THE RT. HON. J.H. CAMPBELL, K.C., M.P.
A.L. HORNER, K.C., M.P.
A.D. STEEL-MAITLAND, M.P.
A.W. SAMUELS, K.C.
P. CAMBRAY

Secretary & Editor.
S. ROSENBAUM, M.SC., F.S.S.




PREFACE

BY THE RIGHT HON. A. BONAR LAW, M.P.


This book, for which I have been asked to write a short preface,
presents the case against Home Rule for Ireland. The articles are
written by men who not only have a complete grasp of the subjects upon
which they write, but who in most cases, from their past experience and
from their personal influence, are well entitled to outline the Irish
policy of the Unionist Party.

Ours is not merely a policy of hostility to Home Rule, but it is, as it
has always been, a constructive policy for the regeneration of Ireland.

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

To create within the United Kingdom a separate Parliament with an
Executive Government responsible to that Parliament would at the best
mean a danger of friction. But if we were ever engaged in a great war,
and the men who controlled the Irish Government took the view in regard
to that war which was taken by the same men in regard to the Boer War;
if they thought the war unjust, and if, as under the last Home Rule
Bill they would have the right to do, they passed resolutions in the
Irish Parliament in condemnation of the war, and even sent embassies
carrying messages of good-will to our enemy, then this second Government
at the heart of the Empire would be a source of weakness which might be
fatal to us.

The ameliorative measures originated by Mr. Balfour when he was Chief
Secretary, and which culminated in the Wyndham Purchase Act, have
created a new Ireland. Mr. Redmond, speaking a year or two ago, said
that Ireland "was studded with the beautiful and happy homes of an
emancipated peasantry." It is a true picture, but it is a picture of the
result of Unionist policy in Ireland, a policy which Mr. Redmond and his
friends, including the present Government, have done their best to
hamper. The driving power of the agitation for Home Rule has always been
discontent with the land system of Ireland, and just in proportion as
land purchase has extended, the demand for Home Rule has died down. The
Nationalist leaders, realising this, and regarding political agitation
as their first object, have compelled the Government to put
insurmountable obstacles in the way of land purchase--not because it had
not been successful, but because it had been too successful.

The prosperity and the peace of Ireland depend upon the completion of
land purchase, and it can only be completed by the use of British
credit, which in my belief can and ought only to be freely given so long
as Ireland is in complete union with the rest of the United Kingdom. In
the present deplorable position of British credit the financing of land
purchase would be difficult; but it is not unreasonable to hope that the
return to power of a Government which would adopt sane financial
methods would restore our credit; and in any case, the object is of such
vital importance that, whatever the difficulties, it must be our policy
to complete with the utmost possible rapidity the system of land
purchase in Ireland.

It will also be our aim to help to the utmost, in the manner suggested
in different articles in this book, in the development of the resources
of Ireland. The Nationalist policy, which is imposed also on the Radical
Party, is in fact more politics and less industry. Our policy is more
industry and less politics.

The strongest objection, however, and, in my opinion, the insurmountable
obstacle to Home Rule, is the injustice of attempting to impose it
against their will upon the Unionists of Ulster. The only intelligible
ground upon which Home Rule can now be defended is the nationality of
Ireland. But Ireland is not a nation; it is two nations. It is two
nations separated from each other by lines of cleavage which cut far
deeper than those which separate Great Britain from Ireland as a whole.
Every argument which can be adduced in favour of separate treatment for
the Irish Nationalist minority as against the majority of the United
Kingdom, applies with far greater force in favour of separate treatment
for the Unionists of Ulster as against the majority of Ireland.

To the majority in Ireland Home Rule may seem to be a blessing, but to
the minority it appears as an intolerable curse. Their hostility to it
is quite as strong as that which was felt by many of the Catholics of
Ireland to Grattan's Parliament. They, too, would say, as the Catholic
Bishop of Waterford said at the time of the Union, that they "would
prefer a Union with the Beys and Mamelukes of Egypt to the iron rod of
the Mamelukes of Ireland."

The minority which holds this view is important in numbers, for it
comprises at the lowest estimate more than a fourth of the population of
Ireland. From every other point of view it is still more important, for
probably the minority pays at least half the taxes and does half the
trade of Ireland. The influence and also the power of the minority is
enormously increased by the way in which its numbers are concentrated in
Belfast and the surrounding counties.

The men who compose this minority ask no special privilege. They demand
only--and they will not demand in vain--that they should not be deprived
against their will of the protection of British law and of the rights of
British citizenship.




CONTENTS.


PREFACE

_By the Rt. Hon. A. Bonar Law, M.P._

INTRODUCTION

_By the Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Carson, K.C., M.P._


HISTORICAL

I. A NOTE ON HOME RULE

_By the Rt. Hon. A.J. Balfour, M.P._

II. HISTORICAL RETROSPECT

_By J.R. Fisher_


CRITICAL

III. THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION

_By George Cave, K.C., M.P._

IV. HOME RULE FINANCE

_By the Rt. Hon. J. Austen Chamberlain, M.P._

V. HOME RULE AND THE COLONIAL ANALOGY

_By L.S. Amery, M.P._

VI. THE CONTROL OF JUDICIARY AND POLICE

_By the Rt. Hon. J.H. Campbell, K.C., M.P._

VII. THE ULSTER QUESTION

_By the Marquis of Londonderry, K.G._

VIII. THE POSITION OF ULSTER

_By the Rt. Hon. Thomas Sinclair._

IX. THE SOUTHERN MINORITIES

_By Richard Bagwell, M.A._

X. HOME RULE AND NAVAL DEFENCE

_By Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, M.P._

XI. THE MILITARY DISADVANTAGES OF HOME RULE

_By the Earl Percy._

XII. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY UNDER HOME RULE

(i.) The Church View

_By the Rt. Rev. C.F. D'Arcy, Bishop of Down._

(ii.) The Nonconformist View

_By Rev. Samuel Prenter, M.A., D.D. (Dublin)._


CONSTRUCTIVE

XIII. UNIONIST POLICY IN RELATION TO RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN IRELAND

_By the Rt. Hon. Gerald Balfour._

XIV. THE COMPLETION OF LAND PURCHASE

_By the Rt. Hon. George Wyndham, M.P._

XV. POSSIBLE IRISH FINANCIAL REFORMS UNDER THE UNION

_By Arthur Warren Samuels, K.C._

XVI. THE ECONOMICS OF SEPARATISM

_By L.S. Amery, M.P._

XVII. PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION

_By the Rt. Hon. Walter Long, M.P._

XVIII. IRISH POOR LAW REFORM

_By John E. Healy, Editor of the "Irish Times."_

XIX. IRISH EDUCATION UNDER THE UNION

_By Godfrey Locker Lampson, M.P._

XX. THE PROBLEM OF TRANSIT AND TRANSPORT IN IRELAND

_By an Irish Railway Director._




INTRODUCTION

BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD CARSON, M.P.


The object of the various essays collected in this book is to set out
the case against Home Rule for Ireland, and to re-state Unionist policy
in the light of the recent changes in that country. The authors are not,
however, to be regarded as forming anything in the nature of a corporate
body, and no collective responsibility is to be ascribed to them. Each
writer is responsible for the views set out in his own article, and for
those alone. At the same time, they are all leaders of Unionist thought
and opinion, and their views in the main represent the policy which the
Unionist Government, when returned to power, will have to carry into
effect.

Among the contributors to the book are an ex-Premier, four ex-Chief
Secretaries for Ireland, an ex-Lord Lieutenant, two ex-Law officers, and
a number of men whose special study of the Irish question entitles them
to have their views most carefully considered when the time comes for
restoring to Ireland those economic advantages of which she has been
deprived by political agitation and political conspiracy. At the present
moment the discussion of the Irish question is embittered by the
pressing and urgent danger to civil and religious liberties involved in
the unconditional surrender of the Government to the intrigues of a
disloyal section of the Irish people. It is the object of writers in
this book to raise the discussions on the Home Rule question above the
bitter conflict of Irish parties, and to show that not only is Unionism
a constructive policy and a measure of hope for Ireland, but that in
Unionist policy lies the only alternative to financial ruin and
exterminating civil dissensions.

We who are Unionists believe first and foremost that the Act of Union
is required--in the words made familiar to us by the Book of Common
Prayer--"for the safety, honour and welfare, of our Sovereign and his
dominions." We are not concerned with the supposed taint which marred
the passing of that Act; we are unmoved by the fact that its terms have
undergone considerable modification. We do not believe in the plenary
inspiration of any Act of Parliament. It is not possible for the living
needs of two prosperous countries to be bound indefinitely by the "dead
hand" of an ancient statute, but we maintain that geographical and
economic reasons make a legislative Union between Great Britain and
Ireland necessary for the interests of both. We see, as Irish Ministers
saw in 1800, that there can be no permanent resting place between
complete Union and total separation. We know that Irish Nationalists
have not only proclaimed separatist principles, but that they have
received separatist money, on the understanding that they would not
oppose a movement to destroy whatever restrictions and safeguards the
Imperial Parliament might impose upon an Irish Government.

The first law of nature with nations and governments, as with
individuals, is self-preservation. It was the vital interests of
national defence that caused Pitt to undertake the difficult and
thankless task of creating the legislative union. If that union was
necessary for the salvation of England and the foundation of the British
Empire, it is assuredly no less necessary for the continued security of
the one and the maintenance and prestige of the other.

Mr. J.R. Fisher, in his historical retrospect, shows us how bitter
experience convinced successive generations of English statesmen of the
dangers that lay in an independent Ireland. One of the very earliest
conflicts between the two countries was caused by the action of the
Irish Parliament in recognising and crowning a Pretender in Dublin
Castle. Then the fact that the Reformation, which soon won the adherence
of the English Government and the majority of the English people, never
gained any great foothold in Ireland, caused the bitter religious wars
which devastated Europe to be reproduced in the relations of the two
countries. When England was fighting desperately with the Spanish
champions of the Papacy, Spanish forces twice succeeded in effecting a
landing on the Irish coast, and were welcomed by the people. Later on,
by the aid of subsidies from an Irish Parliament, Strafford raised
10,000 men in Ireland in order to support Charles I. in his conflict
with the English people. Cromwell realised that the only remedy for the
intrigues and turbulence of the Irish Parliament lay in a legislative
union. But, unfortunately, his Union Parliament was terminated by the
Restoration. Then, again, when France became the chief danger that
England had to face, Tyrconnel, with the aid of French troops and French
subsidies, endeavoured to make Ireland a base for the invasion of
England. Under the Old Pretender again, another effort was made to make
the Irish Parliament a medium for the destruction of English liberties.

In these long-continued and bitter struggles we see the excuse, if not
the justification, for the severe penal laws which were introduced in
order to curb the power of the Irish chieftains. We see also the
beginning of the feud between Ulster and the other provinces in Ireland,
which has continued in a modified form to the present day. Strafford
found that, in order to bolster up the despotism of the Stuarts, he had
not only to invade England, but to expel the Scottish settlers from the
Northern province. The Irish Parliament in the time of Tyrconnel again
began to prepare for the invasion of England by an attempt to destroy
the Ulster plantation. The settlers had their estates confiscated, the
Protestant clergy were driven out and English sympathisers outlawed by
name, in the "hugest Bill of Attainder which the world has seen."

Admiral Lord Charles Beresford points out the danger from a naval point
of view of the French attempts to use Ireland as a base for operations
against England, both under Louis XIV. and under the Republican
Directory. He quotes Admiral Mahan as saying that the movement which
designed to cut the English communications in St. George's Channel
while an invading party landed in the south of Ireland was a strictly
strategic movement and would be as dangerous to England now as it was in
1690. When Grattan extorted from England's weakness the unworkable and
impracticable constitution of 1782, the danger which had always been
present became immensely increased. In less than three years from the
period of boasted final adjustment, Ireland came to a breach with
England on the important question of trade and navigation. Then, again,
at the time of the Regency, the Irish Parliament was actually ready to
choose a person in whom to rest the sovereign executive power of the
nation, different from him whom the British Parliament were prepared to
designate.

In 1795, when the French had made themselves masters of Brabant,
Flanders, and Holland, the rebel government of United Irishmen was so
well-established in Ireland that, as Lord Clare, the Irish Chancellor,
subsequently admitted in the House of Lords, Ireland was for some weeks
in a state of actual separation from Great Britain. When the great
Rebellion of 1798 broke out, the French Directory sent assistance to the
Irish rebels in order to facilitate the greater scheme--the conquest of
England and of Europe. When we come to estimate the danger which the
grant of Home Rule to Ireland would bring to the safety of England, we
are faced with two considerations. In the first place, the movements of
the French in the past were, as we have said, strategic. Given an Irish
Parliament that was hostile to England, or at least dubious in her
loyalty to this country, the movement of a hostile fleet against our
communications would be as dangerous now as it was in the past.

When we try to estimate what would be the feelings of an Irish
Government when England was at war, we have to consider not only the
speeches of avowed enemies of the Empire like Major McBride and the
Irish Americans, but we have also to remember the attitude adopted upon
all questions of foreign policy by the more responsible Nationalists of
the type of Mr. Dillon. Not only have the Irish Nationalist party
consistently opposed every warlike operation that British Governments
have found to be necessary, but they have also fervently attacked the
Powers on the Continent of Europe that have been suspected of friendship
to England. We have only to imagine the element of weakness and disunion
which would be introduced into our foreign policy by an Irish Parliament
that passed resolutions regarding the policy of the Governments, say, of
Russia and of France, in order to realise the immense dangers of setting
up such a Parliament when we are again confronted with a mighty
Confederation of opponents in Europe. It is admitted that the next
European war will be decided by the events of the first few days. In
order to succeed, we shall have to strike and strike quickly. But in
order that there should be swift and effective action, there should be
only one Government to be consulted. The Irish Ministry that was not
actively hostile, but only unsympathetic and dilatory, might, in many
ways, fatally embarrass Ministers at Westminster.

Moreover, another complication has been introduced by the dependence of
England upon Irish food supplies. Lord Percy points out that there are
two stages in every naval war; first, the actual engagement, and then
the blockade or destruction of the ships of the defeated country. He
points out that, even after the destruction of the French Navy at
Trafalgar, the damage done to British oversea commerce was very great.
Modern conditions of warfare have made blockade an infinitely more
difficult and precarious operation, and we must therefore face the
certainty that hostile cruisers will escape and interfere with our
oversea supplies of food. Since Ireland lies directly across our trade
routes, it is probable that the majority of our food supplies will be
derived from Ireland or carried through that country. But Irish
Ministers would not have forgotten the lesson of the famine, when food
was exported from Ireland though the people starved. Curious as it may
seem, Ireland, though a great exporting country, does not under present
conditions feed herself, and therefore an Irish Ministry would
certainly lay in a large stock of the imported food supplies before they
were brought to England, in order first of all absolutely to secure the
food of their own people. It would be open for them at any time, by
cutting off our supplies, our horses and our recruits, to extract any
terms they liked out of the English people or bring this country to its
knees. "England's difficulty" would once again become "Ireland's
opportunity." The experience of 1782 would be repeated. Resistance to
Ireland's demands for extended powers would bring about war between the
two countries. In the striking phrase of Mr. Balfour's arresting
article, "The battle of the two Parliaments would become the battle of
the two peoples." It is only necessary to refer briefly to the fact that
the active section of the Nationalist party has continually and
consistently opposed recruiting for the British Army. It is perfectly
certain that, under Home Rule, this policy would be accentuated rather
than reversed. We now draw recruits from Ireland out of all proportion
to its population. Under Home Rule, the difficulties of maintaining a
proper standard of men and efficiency must be immensely increased.

If there were no other arguments against Home Rule, the paramount
necessities of Imperial defence would demand the maintenance of the
Union. But the opposition to the proposed revolution in Ireland is based
not only on the considerations of Imperial safety, but also on those of
national honour. The historical bases of Irish nationalism have been
destroyed by the arguments summarised in this book by Mr. Fisher and Mr.
Amery. It was the existence of a separate Parliament in Dublin that made
Ireland, for so many centuries, alike a menace to English liberty and
the victim of English reprisals. Miss A.E. Murray has pointed out[1]
that experience seemed to show to British statesmen that Irish
prosperity was dangerous to English liberty. It was the absence of
direct authority over Ireland which made England so nervously anxious
to restrict Irish resources in every direction in which they might, even
indirectly, interfere with the growth of English power. Irish industries
were penalised and crippled, not from any innate perversity on the part
of English statesmen, or from any deliberate desire to ruin Ireland, but
as a natural consequence of exclusion from the Union under the economic
policy of the age. The very poverty of Ireland, as expressed in the
lowness of Irish wages, was a convenient and perfectly justifiable
argument for exclusion. Mr. Amery shows that the Protestant settlers of
Ulster were penalised even more severely than the intriguing Irish
chieftains against whom they were primarily directed.

It was the consciousness of the natural result of separation that caused
the Irish Parliament, upon two separate occasions, to petition for that
union with England which was delayed for over a century. The action of
Grattan and his supporters in wresting the impossible Constitution of
1782, from the harassed and desperate English Government, began that
fatal policy of substituting political agitation for economic reform
which has ever since marred the Irish Nationalist movement. John
Fitzgibbon[2] pointed out in the Irish House of Commons that only two
alternatives lay before his country--Separation or Union. Under
Separation an Irish Parliament might be able to pursue an economic
policy of its own; under Union the common economic policy of the two
countries might be adjusted to the peculiar interests of each.

Pitt, undoubtedly, looked forward to a Customs Union with internal free
trade as the ultimate solution of the difficulty, but a Customs Union
was impossible without the fullest kind of legislative unity. It is true
that the closing years of the eighteenth century were years of
prosperity to certain classes and districts in Ireland, but Mr. Fisher
has shown beyond dispute that this prosperity neither commenced with
Grattan's Parliament nor ended with its fall. It was based upon the
peculiar economic conditions which years of war and preparations for
war had fostered in England; it was bound in any case to disappear with
the growing concentration of industrial interests which followed the
general introduction of machinery. The immediate result of the passing
of the Act of Union was to increase the Irish population and Irish
trade.

But to a certain extent that prosperity was fictitious and doomed to
failure so soon as peace and the introduction of scientific methods of
industry had caused the concentration of the great manufactures. Then
came the great economic disaster for Ireland--the adoption of free trade
by England. The Irish famine of 1849 was not more severe than others
that had preceded it, but its evil effects were accentuated by the
policy of the English Government. The economists decided that the State
ought to do nothing to interfere with private enterprise in feeding the
starving people, and as there was no private enterprise in the country,
where all classes were involved in the common ruin, the people were left
to die of hunger by the roadside. The lands the potato blight spared
were desolated by the adoption of free trade. The exploitation of the
virgin lands of the American West gradually threw the fertile midlands
of Ireland from tillage into grass. A series of bad harvests aggravated
the evil. The landlords and the farmers of Ireland were divided into two
political camps, and, instead of uniting for their common welfare, each
attempted to cast upon the other the burden of the economic catastrophe.
To sum up in the words of Mr. Amery--

"The evils of economic Separatism, aggravated by social evils
surviving from the Separatism of an earlier age, united to revive a
demand for the extension and renewal of the very cause of those
evils."

The political demand for the repeal of the Act of Union, which had lain
dormant for so many years, was revived by the energies of Isaac Butt. He
found in the Irish landlords, smarting under the disestablishment of the
Irish Church, a certain amount of sympathy and assistance, but the
"engine" for which Finton Lalor had asked in order to draw the "repeal
train," was not discovered until Parnell linked the growing agrarian
unrest to the Home Rule Campaign. This is not the place to tell again
the weary story of the land war or to show how the Irish Nationalists
exploited the grievances of the Irish tenants in order to encourage
crime and foment disloyalty in the country. It is sufficient to say that
this conflict--the conduct of which reflects little credit either upon
the Irish protagonists or the British Government which alternately
pampered and opposed it--was ended, for the time at least, by the
passing of Mr. Wyndham's Land Act. We look forward in perfect confidence
to the time when that great measure shall achieve its full result in
wiping out the memory of many centuries of discord and hatred. But the
Separatist movement, which has always been the evil genius of Irish
politics, has not yet been completely exorcised. The memory of those
past years when the minority in Ireland constituted the only bulwark of
Irish freedom and of English liberty, has not yet passed away. The Irish
Nationalist party since Parnell have spared no exertions to impress more
deeply upon the imaginations of a sentimental race the memory of those
"ancient weeping years." They have preached a social and a civil war
upon all those in Ireland who would not submit their opinions and
consciences to the uncontrolled domination of secret societies and
leagues.

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