Handbook of Home Rule (1887) by W. E. Gladstone et al.

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Mr. Lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in 1800 deserve to
be set forth.

"While, however, the Irish policy of Pitt appears to be both morally and
politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, I cannot agree
with those who believe that the arrangement of 1782 could have been
permanent. The Irish Parliament would doubtless have been in time
reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable.
Imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the Imperial
Parliament, in which Ireland had no voice; and, unlike Canada or
Australia, Ireland is profoundly affected by every change of Imperial
policy. Connection with England was of overwhelming importance to the
lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found
degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. Under such
circumstances a Union of some kind was inevitable. It was simply a
question of time, and must have been demanded by Irish opinion. At the
same time, it would not, I think, have been such a Union as that of
1800. The conditions of Irish and English politics are so extremely
different, and the reasons for preserving in Ireland a local centre of
political life are so powerful, that it is probable a Federal Union
would have been preferred. Under such a system the Irish Parliament
would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely
local subjects, while an Imperial Parliament, in which Irish
representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."[36]

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH.

None of the recent opponents of Home Rule have written against that
policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than Mr. Goldwin
Smith. But no one has stated with more force the facts and
considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made
the Liberal party Home Rulers now. His _coup d'oeil_ remains the most
pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of Ireland
against the English methods of governing that country. Twenty years ago
he anticipated the advice recently given by Mr. Gladstone. In 1867 he
wrote:--

"I have myself sought and found in the study of Irish history the
explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so
amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their
own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness,
lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[37] He explains the
paradox thus: "But it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the
Irish from their misfortunes. It has been well said of their past
industrial character and history,--'We were reckless, ignorant,
improvident, drunken, and idle. We were idle, for we had nothing to do;
we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was
denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken,
for we sought to forget our misery. That time has passed away for ever.'
No part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects
the drunkenness of the Irish people with their misery. Drunkenness is,
generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair
of the Irish peasant as rankly as from that of his English fellow. The
sums of money which have lately been transmitted by Irish emigrants to
their friends in Ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose
denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an
industrial point of view.... There seems no good reason for believing
that the Irish Kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as
people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations
in circumstances favourable to industry."[38] He shows that the Irish
have not been so placed. "Still more does justice require that allowance
should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the Irish
people. If they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of
property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation
of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or
even any inherent weakness. They have never had the advantage of the
training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise
from barbarism to civilization. The progress of the Irish people was
arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities,
following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly
resuming its course. The pressure of overwhelming misery has now been
reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of
education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning
to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved
character of the people. Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with
the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal,
especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to
imply depravity in a nation. There are still speakers and writers who
seem to think that the Irish are incurably vicious, because the
accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a
wave of the legislator's wand. Some still believe, or affect to believe,
that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and
understandings of all who breathe it."[39]

Elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system:

"How many centuries of a widely different training have the English
people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[40]

Of the "training" through which the Irish went, he says--

"The existing settlement of land in Ireland, whether dating from the
confiscations of the Stuarts, or from those of Cromwell, rests on a
proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement
of land rests over a considerable part of France. It may, therefore, be
considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men;
and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of
respect for property is shown by the Irish people if a proprietorship
which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less
sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial
right."[41]

The character which he gives of Irish landlordism deserves to be quoted:

"The Cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while
they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of
Puritan conquerors towards a conquered Catholic people. 'I have eaten
with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but I never
prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst
upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the
Irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness
of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their
drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires
of England far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices
which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their
influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny
had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure,
in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the
background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the
Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."[42]

Mr. Goldwin Smith deals with agrarian crime thus:

"The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier
period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman),
are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in
speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be
unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or
to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the
part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive
at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian
conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was
very small. In Munster, in 1833, out of 973 crimes, 627 were Whiteboy,
or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence,
were probably committed from the same motive.

"In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy
code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by
which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They
were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany
in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the
people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but
not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. The
Whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled
hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[43] We have
seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve
the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises
property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as
robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code;
finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he
should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or
property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[44] "A
people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is
consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[45]

These extracts are taken from _Irish History and Irish Character_, which
was published in 1861. But in 1867 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote a series of
letters to the _Daily News_, which were republished in 1868 under the
title of _The Irish Question_; and these letters form, perhaps, the most
statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on
the Irish difficulty.

In the preface Mr. Goldwin Smith begins:

"The Irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the
adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference
of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen; and the harshness of
English public opinion has embittered the effects on Irish feeling of
the indifference of Parliament. Occasionally a serious effort has been
made by an English statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish
questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be
just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for
Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much
to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[46]

The only comment I shall make on these words is: they were penned more
than half a century after Mr. Pitt's Union, which was to shower down
blessings on the Irish people.

Mr. Goldwin Smith's first letter was written on the 23rd of November,
1867, the day of the execution of the Fenians Allen, Larkin, and
O'Brien. He says--

"There can be no doubt, I apprehend, that the Irish difficulty has
entered on a new phase, and that Irish disaffection has, to repeat an
expression which I heard used in Ireland, come fairly into a line with
the other discontented nationalities of Europe. Active Fenianism
probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the
success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation,
extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher.

"England has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and
overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which
would prevent its application, the part of Russia in Poland, or of
Austria in Italy--a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all
our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own
freedom. Our position will be worse than that of Russia in this respect,
that, while her Poland is only a province, our Fenianism is an element
pervading every city of the United Kingdom in which Irish abound, and
allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder.
Wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the Irish people
to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their
avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their
disaffection running through every member of our social frame. Not only
so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an
Irish nation in the United States, where the Irish are a great political
power, swaying by their votes the councils of the American Republic, and
in immediate contact with those Transatlantic possessions of England,
the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day
be patriotic to have dissuaded.

" ... That Ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a
particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are
rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise
in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only
adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection.

"The Fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though
no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the
remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the
great truth which the English people have to lay to heart."[47]

Mr. Goldwin Smith then dispels the notion that the Irish question is a
religious one.

"When Fenianism first appeared, the Orangemen, in accordance with their
fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. They were undeceived, I was
told, by seeing a priest run away from the Fenians in fear of his
life."[48]

Neither was it a question of the land.

"The land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter,
and it is the great key to Irish history in the past; but I do not
believe that even this is fundamental."

He then states what is "fundamental."[49]

"The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in
the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame
by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed
before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want
of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of
national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything
deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament
the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning,
to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was
given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is
nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of
Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the
success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very
remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish
talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin
is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and
the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails
altogether to satisfy the people. 'In Ireland we can make no appeal to
patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no
patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything
patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing,
not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They
seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths.

"If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in
this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even
insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to
ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no
national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence,
even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by
a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact,
regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves
fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more
imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling
and affection more than ourselves."[50]

And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.

Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch
unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.

"The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being
conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne,
has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish
nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have
been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very
different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed.
What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had
done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have
unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union
has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again.
We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and
Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations
one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this
deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the
future."[51]

Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly
international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought
about. Here it is.

"1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the
popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense
desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way
possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United
Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for
and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend
to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion
of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.

"2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the
Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last
proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to
be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal
acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient
security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious
difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there
is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.

"3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not
vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is
really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each
province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate
(subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all
matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in
which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of
course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as
that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the
extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the
masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central
assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring
(as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the
circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a
part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also,
much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the
present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business,
together with such other matters as the central legislative might think
fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[52]

Thus it will be seen that twenty years ago Mr. Goldwin Smith anticipated
Mr. Chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on
the road to an Irish Parliament.

* * * * *

MR. DICEY.

A fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper Union,"
than Mr. Dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more
effective shots into Mr. Pitt's unfortunate arrangement of 1800.

How well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these
pithy sentences--"Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of
the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do
not yet form an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more
wretched (for the whole European world has made progress, and Ireland
with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection to
England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by
its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though
slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland
rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the
feud between Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of
Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, and
has, therefore, not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment
which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union."[53]

What follows reflects honour on Mr. Dicey as an honest opponent who does
not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy
of the Imperial Parliament!

"On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of
whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are
agreed--the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the
Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. On this
matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. As to
the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do
differ; that England, whether from her own fault or the fault of the
Irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in Ireland
of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as
any fact of history or of experience. Every scheme has been tried in
turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested,
produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has increased
the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant
supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment,
and the one successful act of resistance to the English dominion was
effected by a Protestant Parliament supported by an army of volunteers,
led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a
Protestant Parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so
reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the
destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of
Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on
the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was
delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into
a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and
agitation, and at last placed England and Ireland further apart,
morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of
Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with
Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation,
instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. The
Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the
attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be
followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement
relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on
constitutional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional
measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of
dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of
Grattan, and it is more than possible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded
by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted
with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures
admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation,
and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law,
when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as
they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils; or
why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population
without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the
Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to
England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not
contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without
having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to
Ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of
humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all
statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect--has failed in
obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good
intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its
causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an
insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors
which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English
statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and
greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to
the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland
because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the
actions of the courts, are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in
full sympathy with law-breakers."[54]

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