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Against Home Rule (1912) by Various

V >> Various >> Against Home Rule (1912)




The articles upon the Ulster question by Lord Londonderry and Mr.
Sinclair show that the Northern province still maintains her historic
opposition to Irish Separatism and Irish intrigue. She stands firmly by
the same economic principles which have enabled her, in spite of
persecution and natural disadvantages, to build up so great a
prosperity. She knows well that the only chance for the rest of Ireland
to attain to the standard of education, enlightenment and independence
which she has reached, is to free itself from the sinister domination
under which it lies, and to assert its right to political and religious
liberty. Ulster sees in Irish Nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed
upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and
pandering to superstition. Even at this moment the Nationalist leagues
have succeeded in superseding the law of the land by the law of the
league. We need only point to the remarks which the Lord Chief Justice
of Ireland and Mr. Justice Kenny have been compelled to make to the
Grand Juries quite recently, to show what Nationalist rule means to the
helpless peasants in a great part of the country.

But the differences which still sever the two great parties in Ireland
are not only economic but religious. The general slackening of
theological dispute which followed the weary years of religious warfare
after the Reformation, has never brought peace to Ireland. In England
the very completeness of the defeat of Roman Catholicism has rendered
the people oblivious to the dangers of its aggression. The Irish
Unionists are not monsters of inhuman frame; they are men of like
passions with Englishmen. Though they hold their religious views with
vigour and determination, there is nothing that they would like more
than to be able to forget their points of difference from those who are
their fellow Christians. It is perhaps necessary to point out once again
that the Roman Catholic Church is a political, as well as a religious,
institution, and to remind Englishmen that it is by the first law of its
being an intolerant and aggressive organisation. All Protestants in
Ireland feel deep respect for much of the work which is carried on by
the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. They gladly acknowledge the
influence of its priesthood in maintaining and upholding the traditional
morality and purity of the Irish race. They venerate the memories of
those brave Irish priests who defied persecution in order to bring
succour to their flocks in time of need. But they are bound to deal with
the present political situation as they find it. They are determined
that no Church, however admirable, and no creed, however lofty, should
be forced upon them against their wills. There is a dark side to the
picture, on which it is unnecessary to dwell. We have only to ask the
Nonconformists of England what would be their feelings were a Roman
Catholic majority returned to the British House of Commons.

In most of the articles in this book which deal with the religious
question; special stress is laid upon recent Papal legislation. The _Ne
Temere_ and the _Motu Proprio_ decrees have constituted an invasion of
the rights hitherto enjoyed by the minority in Ireland, and they are
even more significant as an illustration of the policy of the Roman
curia. Those who have watched the steady increase of Roman aggression in
every Roman Catholic country, followed as it has been by passionate
protest and determined action by the civil Governments, must realise the
danger which Home Rule would bring to the faith and liberty of the
people of Ireland. It is not inconsistent to urge, as many of us have
urged, that Home Rule would mean alike a danger to the Protestant faith
and a menace to Catholic power. The immediate result of successful Papal
interference with civil liberties in every land has been a sweeping
movement among the people which has been, not Protestant, but
anti-Christian in its nature. If we fear the tyranny which the Roman
Catholic Church has established under British rule in Malta and in
Quebec, may we not fear also the reaction from such tyranny which has
already taken place in France and Portugal.

But we are told that there are to be in the new Home Rule Bill
safeguards which will protect the minority from any interference with
their civil and religious liberties. It is not necessary for me to go
over again in detail the ground which is so admirably covered by Mr.
George Cave and Mr. James Campbell. They show clearly that the existence
of restrictions and limitations upon the activities of a Dublin
Parliament, whether they are primarily intended to safeguard the British
connection or to protect the liberties of minorities, cannot be worth
the paper on which they are printed. Let us take, for instance, an
attempt to prevent the marriages of Irish Protestants from being
invalidated by an Irish Parliament. We may point out that an amendment
to the 1893 Home Rule Bill, designed to safeguard such marriages, was
rejected by the vote of the Irish Nationalist party. But even were
legislation affecting the marriage laws of the minority to be placed
outside the control of a Dublin Parliament, the effect would not be to
reassure the Protestant community. Mr. James Campbell mentions a case
which has profoundly stirred the Puritan feelings of Irish
Protestantism. A man charged with bigamy has been released without
punishment because the first marriage, although in conformity with the
law of the land, was not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church.
However justifiable that course may have been in the exceptional
circumstances of that particular case, the precedent obviously prepares
the way for a practical reversal of the law by executive or judicial
action. We must remember that, since the _Ne Temere_ decree has come
into force, the marriages of Protestants and Roman Catholics are held by
the Roman Catholic Church to be absolutely null and void unless they are
celebrated in a Roman Catholic Church. We have also to bear in mind that
these marriages will not be permitted by the priesthood except under
conditions which many Irish Protestants consider humiliating and
impossible. No more deadly attack upon the faith of the Protestant
minority in the three provinces in Ireland can be imagined than to make
a denial of their faith the essential condition to the enjoyment of the
highest happiness for which they may look upon this earth.

The second decree prohibits, under pain of excommunication, any Roman
Catholic from bringing an ecclesiastical officer before a Court of
Justice. Even under the Union Government this decree is a danger to the
liberty of the subject. Under an independent Irish Government, nothing
except that vast anti-clerical revolution which some people foresee
could possibly reassure the people as to the attitude of the Executive
Government in dealing with a large and privileged class. These
considerations make one more reason for refusing the Colonial analogy
which is so ingeniously pressed by such apologists for Home Rule as Mr.
Erskine Childers. Mr. Amery analyses the confusion of thought between
Home Rule as meaning responsible Government and Home Rule as meaning
separate government which underlies the arguments of Liberal Home
Rulers. Ireland has Home Rule in the sense of having free representative
institutions. She is prevented by geographical and economic conditions
from enjoying separate government under the same terms on which the
Colonies possess it. As Mr. Amery points out, the United Kingdom is
geographically a single island group. No part of Ireland is so
inaccessible from the political centre of British power as the remoter
parts of the Highlands, while racially no less than physically Ireland
is an integral part of the United Kingdom. Economically also the two
countries are bound together in a way which makes a common physical
policy absolutely necessary for the welfare of both countries. The
financial arguments which might have made it possible to permit an
independent fiscal policy for Ireland under free trade, have disappeared
with the certain approach of a revision of the tariff policies of
England. There can be no separate tariffs for the two countries, or even
a common tariff, without a common Government to negotiate and enforce
it. If there were no other objection to the establishment of a separate
Government in Dublin, it would be impossible because legislative
autonomy can only be coupled with financial independence.

The financial difficulties in the way of any grant of Home Rule are
fully explained by Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Three attempts at framing
schemes for financing Home Rule were made by Mr. Gladstone in the past.
All the powers of this great and resourceful dialectician were employed
in defending these various schemes in turn. He was not deterred from
pressing any scheme by the fact that in important details it was
inconsistent with or even opposed to what had been previously
recommended. But if there was one principle on which Mr. Gladstone never
turned his back it was in demanding a contribution from Ireland for
Imperial services. At one time he demanded a cash payment, at another
the assignment of the Customs, and on yet another occasion the payment
to the Imperial Exchequer of a quota--one-third--of the tax-revenue in
Ireland.

The effect of recent social legislation, such as Old Age Pensions,
Labour Exchanges, and Sickness and Unemployment Insurance has been to
confer on Ireland benefits much greater in value than the Irish
contribution in respect of the new taxation imposed. In consequence of
this change the present Irish revenue falls short of the expenditure
incurred for Irish purposes in Ireland. Mr. Chamberlain shows that if
any scheme even remotely resembling any of those put forward on previous
occasions by Mr. Gladstone is embodied in the new Bill, and if a
moderate contribution for Imperial services is included, the Irish
deficit must range from L2,500,000 to L3,500,000. If by any process of
juggling with the figures the Irish Parliament is again to be started
with a surplus the deficit must have been made good by charging it
against the Imperial taxpayer. But again there is no permanence in such
a surplus. It must disappear if the ameliorative measures which are long
overdue in Ireland are undertaken by an Irish Parliament; and previous
experience has already illustrated that even without the adoption of any
such new schemes surpluses would long ago have made room for deficits.
It will be the duty of the Nationalists party to say definitely what are
the fiscal reserves upon which they can draw in order to establish
permanent equilibrium between revenue and expenditure in Ireland.

Not only does Unionist policy for Ireland involve considerations of
national safety and national honour, but it is also necessary for the
economic welfare of both countries. The remarkable success which has
attended Mr. Wyndham's Land Act of 1903 has alarmed the political party
in Ireland, which depends for its influence on the poverty and
discontent of the rural population of Ireland. Mr. Wyndham in his
article upon Irish Land Purchase shows clearly the blessings which have
followed wherever his Act has been given fair play, and the evils which
have resulted in the suppression of Land Purchase by Mr. Birrell's Act
of 1909. The dual ownership created by Mr. Gladstone's ill-advised and
reckless legislation led to Ireland being starved both in capital and
industry and brought the whole of Irish agriculture to the brink of
ruin, and under these circumstances, Conservative statesmen determined,
in accordance with the principles of the Act of Union, to use a joint
exchequer for the purpose of relieving Irish distress. Credit of the
State was employed to convert the occupiers of Irish farms into the
owners of the soil. The policy of the Ashbourne Acts was briefly that
any landlord could agree with any tenant on the purchase price of his
holding. The State then advanced the credit sum to the landlord in cash,
while the tenant paid an instalment of 4 per cent. for forty-nine years.
It is important to notice that the landlord received cash and that the
tenants paid interest at the then existing rate of interest on Consols,
namely, 3 per cent. The great defect in these Acts was that they applied
only to separate holdings and not to estates as a whole; but their
success can be estimated by the fact that under them twenty-seven
thousand tenants became owners by virtue of advances which amounted to
over ten million pounds. Under Mr. Balfour's Acts of 1891 and 1896, the
landlord was paid in stock instead of cash, and the tenants still paid 4
per cent., the interest being reduced to the then rate on Consols--2-3/4
per cent.--and the Sinking Fund being proportionately increased. It will
be noticed that these Acts began the practise of paying the landlord in
stock, though at that time Irish Land Stock with a face value of L100
became worth as much as L114. The exchequer was, moreover, permitted to
retain grants due for various purposes in Ireland and to recoup itself
out of them in case of any combined refusal to repay on the part of
tenants.

The Irish Land Act of 1903 was the product of the experience gained
during eighteen years of the operation of the preceding Purchase Acts.
It was founded upon an agreement made in 1902 between representatives of
Irish landlords and tenants. Cash payments were resumed to the
landlords, the tenants' instalments were reduced to 3-1/4 per cent., and
a bonus, as it was called, of twelve millions of money was made
available to bridge the gap between the landlords and the tenants at the
rate of 12 per cent, on the amount advanced. That Act possessed the
additional advantage of dealing with the estates as a whole instead of
with individual holdings, and it substituted the principle of speedy
purchase for that of dilatory litigation. This remarkable and generous
measure initiated a great and beneficent revolution, but every popular
and useful feature of the Act of 1903 was distorted or destroyed in the
Land Act which the present Government passed at the instigation of the
Irish Nationalist Party in 1909. In Mr. Wyndham's words "a solemn treaty
framed in the interest of Ireland was torn up to deck with its tatters
the triumph of Mr. Dillon's unholy alliance with the British Treasury."
Under the Act of 1909, landlords, instead of cash payments, are to
receive stock at 3 per cent. issued on a falling market. This stock
cannot possibly appreciate because owing to the embarrassment of Irish
estates a large proportion of each issue is thrown back upon the market
at the redemption of mortgages. The tenant's annuity is raised from
3-1/4 per cent, to 3-1/2 per cent., a precedent not to be found in any
previous experiment under Irish Land Purchase finance. The bonus is
destroyed and litigation is substituted for security and speed. The
results of the two Acts are instructive. Under the 1903 Act the
potential purchasers amounted to nearly a quarter of a million; under
the 1909 Act the applications in respect of direct sales being less than
nine thousand. It is hardly necessary to go into the reasons advanced
for this disastrous change. It has been brought about not in order to
relieve the British Treasury, but in order to rescue from final
destruction the waning influence of Irish Nationalism. Mr. Wyndham has
the authority of the leader of the Unionist Party for his statement that
the first constructive work of the Unionist Party in Ireland must be to
resume the Land policy of 1903 and to pursue the same objects by the
best methods until they have all been fully and expeditiously achieved.
Unionist policy cannot, however, be confined to the restoration of Land
Purchase. The ruin which Free Trade finance has inflicted upon Irish
agriculture can only be remedied, as Mr. Childers saw at the time of the
Financial Relations Commission in 1895, by a readjustment of the fiscal
system of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Gerald Balfour shows us in one of the most able papers in the book
the extraordinary development which has been seen in recent years in
Irish agricultural methods. The revival of Irish rural industries dates
from Mr. Balfour's chief-secretaryship. The Parliament which set up in
Ireland the Congested Districts Board and sanctioned the building of
light railways at the public expense, also witnessed the formation in
Ireland of a Society which was destined to work great changes in the
social conditions of the country. The Irish Agricultural Organisation
Society represents the fruit of a work begun in the face of incredible
difficulties and remorseless opposition by Sir Horace Plunkett in 1889.
"Better farming, better business, better living"--these were the
principles which he and Mr. Anderson set out to establish in Ireland.
Their representatives were described as monsters in human shape, and
they were adjured to cease their "hellish work." Now the branches of the
Society number nearly 1000, with an annual turnover of upwards of 2-1/2
millions, and they include creameries, village banks, and societies for
the purchase of seeds and manure and for the marketing of eggs. It is
not necessary to tell again the story of the Recess Committee and the
formation of the Department of Agriculture. The result of its work,
crowned as it was by Mr. Wyndham's Purchase Act, is shown by the fact
that Irish trade has increased from 103 millions in 1904 to 130 millions
in 1910. The steady object which Sir Horace Plunkett has set before him
is to counteract the demoralising effect of paternal legislation on the
part of the Government, by reviving and stimulating a policy of
self-help. The I.A.O.S. has done valuable work in enabling the Irish
farmers, by co-operating, to secure a more stable position in the
English market, to secure themselves against illegitimate and fraudulent
competition and to standardise the quality of their product, but even
more important has been the work of the Society in releasing the farmers
from the bondage of the "Gombeen" man who has for so many years been the
curse of Irish agriculture. The "Gombeen" man is alike trader, publican,
and money-lender, and he is the backbone of official Nationalist
influence. By lending money to the peasant proprietors at exorbitant
rates, by selling inferior seeds and manures and by carrying on his
transactions with the farmers chiefly in kind, the "Gombeen" man has
grown fat upon the poverty and despair of the farmer. It is not
surprising that he views the liberating work of the I.A.O.S. with the
bitterest hostility--an hostility which has been translated into
effective action by the Nationalist Party in Parliament.

Sir Horace Plunkett was driven from office on the pretext that it should
be held by a member of Parliament. His successor, Mr. T.W. Russell, lost
his seat in the General Election of 1910, but he was retained in power
since he was willing to lend himself to the destructive intrigues of the
"Molly Maguires." The Unionist Party does not intend to interfere with
the independence of the I.A.O.S. which constitutes in their eyes its
greatest feature, but they are determined that it shall have fair play,
and that the hundred thousand Irish farmers which constitutes its
membership shall be enabled to increase their prosperity by co-operative
action. The Unionist Party will also have to undertake more active
measures in order to restore to Irish agriculture the position of
supremacy for which it is naturally fitted. Mr. Amery and Mr. Samuels
both discuss in outline the effects of Tariff Reform upon the future of
Ireland.

I do not intend at the present moment to go further into the details of
the policy which the Unionist Government will be likely to adopt on this
question. I think, however, it would be desirable to point out that in
dairy produce and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco,
sugar-beet, vegetables and fruit, in all of which Ireland is especially
interested, Irish products would have free entry into the protected
markets of Great Britain, Canadian and Australian products would of
course have such a preference over foreign competitors as a Home Rule
Ireland might claim, but it is only under the Union that Ireland could
expect complete freedom of access to our markets. Mr. Amery sees in the
train ferry a possible bridge over the St. George's Channel and looks
forward to the time when the west coast of Ireland will be the starting
point of all our fast mail and passenger steamers across the Atlantic.
Two schemes with this object have received the attention of Parliament.
How far the present practical difficulties can be surmounted it is not
very easy to say, but it is certain that if Home Rule were granted the
Blacksod Bay and the Galway Bay Atlantic routes would have to be
abandoned.

These conditions naturally raise the whole transport problem in Ireland.
Mr. Arthur Samuels suggests a scheme of State assistance to a cheap
transport which may require attention later on, though it can only form
part of a larger scheme of traffic reorganisation. The Nationalist Party
seems definitely to have pledged itself to a scheme of nationalisation.
This policy has been urged in season and out of season upon an apathetic
Ireland by the _Freeman's Journal._ The cost of the nationalisation of
Irish railways could not be less than fifty millions, while the annual
charge on the Exchequer was assessed by the Irish Railways Commission at
L250,000, and it was anticipated that a further recourse to Irish rates
might be required. It would be obviously impossible to ask the British
Treasury to advance such an enormous sum of money to an independent
Irish Government.

At what rate could an Irish government raise the money? The present
return on Irish Railway capital is 3.77 per cent., and thus, to borrow
fifty millions at 4 per cent, will involve an annual loss of over
L300,000 a year, even without a sinking fund. It is extremely doubtful
whether the credit of an Irish Government would be better than that of
Hungary or Argentina. If anything more surely led an Irish Government
to financial disaster it would be the working of railways. As the
Majority Report of the Railway Commission recommended on other than
commercial lines, the 25 per cent. reduction in rates and fares
suggested by Nationalist witnesses would involve a loss of more than
half a million a year. We see, therefore, immediately, that if anything
is to be done at all to improve Irish transport it must be done by a
Government that has the confidence of the money market. The railway
director who contributes the principal article on this subject in the
book calculates that a public grant of two millions, and a guaranteed
loan of eight millions would suffice to carry out all the reforms that
are necessary in order to place Irish railways in a thoroughly sound
position.

It is obvious that with the development of trade which will follow on
the adoption of Tariff Reform by England, Irish companies will be in a
better position to help themselves, and the increase in the wealth and
prosperity of Ireland must soon enable the railways to carry out
constructive works which they all admit to be necessary.

Mr. Locker Lampson's article on education undoubtedly shows the Irish
Government in its less favourable light. The neglect and starvation of
Irish education has been a reproach to the intelligence and humanity of
successive Irish administrations. Mr. Locker Lampson shows, however,
that financially and politically it would be impossible for any Irish
administration to carry out the great and sweeping reforms in Irish
education as are still necessary. The mischievous principle of paying
fees by results, although it has disappeared from the National schools,
still clings to intermediate education in Ireland. Before any other kind
of reform is even considered the intermediate system in Ireland should
be placed upon a proper foundation. The secondary system is also
deficient because--what Mr. Dillon called "gaps in the law"--there is no
co-ordination between the primary and the secondary schools. The
establishment of higher grade schools in large centres and the
institution of advanced departments in connection with selected primary
schools in rural districts would only cost about L25,000 a year, and
would go far to meet the disastrous effects of the present system. But
no system of education can possibly be successful that does not place
the teachers in a position of dignity and comfort. At the present moment
the salaries of the secondary teachers are miserable; lay assistants in
secondary schools are paid about L80 a year. They have no security of
tenure; they have no register of teachers as a guarantee of efficiency.

The other problems which immediately confront the Irish government are
the establishment of a private bill legislation and a reform of the
Irish Poor Law. With regard to the private bill legislation I will say
no more than that it has always formed part of the Unionist policy for
Ireland, and that I agree fully with the arguments by which Mr. Walter
Long shows the necessity and justice for such a reform.

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