IRELAND AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT

by

MICHAEL F. J. McDONNELL

With a Preface by John Redmond, M. P. 

1908

_Matri dilectissimae_

PREFACE

Without agreeing with every expression of opinion contained in thefollowing pages I heartily recommend this book, especially to Englishmenand Scotchmen, as a thoughtful, well-informed, and scholarly study ofseveral of the more important features of the Irish question. 

It has always been my conviction that one of the chief causes of thedifficulty of persuading the British people of the justice andexpediency of conceding a full measure of National autonomy to Irelandwas to be found in the deep and almost universal ignorance in GreatBritain regarding Irish affairs present and past--an ignorance which hasenabled every unscrupulous opponent of Irish demands to appeal with moreor less success to inherited and anti-Irish prejudice as his chiefbulwark against reform. It was this conviction that led Mr. Parnell andhis leading colleagues, after the defeat of the first Home Rule Bill in1886, to establish an agency in England for the express purpose ofremoving the ignorance and combating its effects, and no advocate ofIrish claims in England or Scotland has failed to find traces down tothis day of the good effects of the propaganda thus set on foot, thediscontinuance of which was one of the lamentable results of thedissensions in the Irish National Party between 1890 and 1900. 

This book carries on the work of combating British ignorance of Irishaffairs and the effects of that ignorance in a manner which seems to mesingularly effective. The writer is no mere rhetorician or dealer ingeneralities. On the contrary, he deals in particular facts and giveshis authorities. Nothing is more striking than the care he hasobviously taken to ascertain the details of the subjects with which hehas concerned himself and the inexorable logic of his method. It isperfectly safe to say that he neglected few sources of information whichpromised any valuable results, and that he has condensed into a fewpages the more vital points of many volumes. It is not necessary to sayanything of his style except that the cultured reader will mostappreciate and enjoy it. 

I shall not anticipate what the author has to say except in respect ofone particular matter to which it seems to me expedient that particularpublic attention should be directed, especially by English and Scotchreaders. The study of Irish history throws an inglorious light on thecharacter of many British statesmen, and one of the salient factsbrought into prominence in this little volume is that, even since theconversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule, more than one leader of eachof the two great political parties in Great Britain have displayed anutter lack of political principle in their dealings with Ireland, andespecially with the Irish National question. I cannot but think that ifthe facts, as told by the author of this volume, were universally, oreven widely, known amongst Englishmen and Scotchmen there would be muchless heard in the future regarding Home Rule eventuating in Rome Rule orendangering the existence of the Empire. 

This volume will, I hope, have a wide circulation not only in GreatBritain, where such works are specially needed but in Ireland itself, where also it is well calculated to strengthen the faith of convincedHome Rulers and to bring light to the few who are still opposed to theIrish National demand for self-government, and to other important, though minor, reforms. 

J. E. REDMOND. 

December, 1907. 

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ITHE EXECUTIVE IN IRELAND

CHAPTER IITHE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

CHAPTER IIITHE ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF IRELAND

CHAPTER IVTHE LAND QUESTION

CHAPTER VTHE RELIGIOUS QUESTION

CHAPTER VITHE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM

CHAPTER VIIUNIONISM IN IRELAND

CHAPTER VIIIIRELAND AND DEMOCRACY

CHAPTER IXIRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN

CHAPTER XCONCLUSION

NOTES

ADDENDUM

 "You desire my thoughts on the affairs of Ireland, a subject little considered, and consequently not understood in England. "

 --JOHN HELY HUTCHINSON, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in a letter written in 1779 to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. 

INTRODUCTION

A decree of Pope Adrian IV. , the only Englishman who has sat in thechair of St. Peter, in virtue of the professed jurisdiction of thePapacy over all islands, by a strange irony, sanctioned the invasion ofIreland by Strongbow in the reign of Henry II. Three years ago I stoodin the crypt of St. Peter's in Rome, and the Englishman who was with meexpatiated on the appropriate nature of the massive sarcophagus of redgranite, adorned only with a carved bull's head at each of the fourcorners, which seemed to him to stand as a type of British might andBritish simplicity, and in which the sacristan had told us lay all thatwas mortal of Nicholas Breakspeare. Seeing that I took no part in thispanegyric, he took me on one side and said that he had observed that allthe English Protestants to whom he showed that tomb, situated as it isliterally _ad limina Apostolorum_, waxed eloquent, but, on the otherhand, the Irish Catholics whom he told that it contained the bones ofthe dead Pontiff invariably shook their fists at the ashes of theunwitting, but none the less actual, source of their country's ills. Tothis I replied by quoting to him a saying of Robert Louis Stevenson, whoas a Scot viewed the matter impartially, and who declared "that theIrishman should not love the Englishman is not disgraceful, rather, indeed, honourable, since it depends on wrongs ancient like the race andnot personal to him who cherishes the indignation. "

 * * * * *

The great tendency which has been so marked a feature of Irish life inthe course of the last decade to turn the attention of the peopletowards efforts at self-improvement and the development of self-reliancewithout regard to English aid, English neglect, or English opinion, excellent though it has been in every other respect, has had this onedrawback--that there has grown up a generation of Englishmen, well-intentioned towards our country, to whom the problems of IrishGovernment are an unknown quantity. The ignorance of Irish affairs inEngland is due partly to ourselves, but also to a natural heedlessnessarising from distance and preoccupation with problems with whichEnglishmen are more intimately concerned. 

In view of the awakening of the democratic forces of Great Britain it isvital that Irish questions should be set before the eyes of theelectorate of Great Britain, in order that, when for the first time theconstitutional questions involved are placed before voters unprejudicedby class interests or a fellow-feeling for the pretensions of propertywherever situate, there may be a body of electors who realise thegravity of the problems in question, and who have a full appreciation ofthe history of the case. 

The Irish question has at no time been brought before the English publicless than at the present day. Fenianism in the seventies and the variousagrarian agitations in the eighties served to keep it constantly beforethe English eyes, and after the acquittal of Mr. Parnell and hiscolleagues of the charges brought against them by the _Times_ mucheducative work was done for a short time by Irish Members of Parliamenton English platforms. 

The demands of Ireland have always been met by an unjust dilemma. Whenshe has been disturbed the reply has been that till quiet is restorednothing can be done, and when a peaceful Ireland has demandedlegislation the absence of agitation has been adduced as a reason forthe retort that the request is not widespread, and can, in consequence, be ignored. 

The remedy against such inaction proving successful in the future liesin the existence of a strong body of public opinion in Great Britain, educated to such a degree in the facts of the case as to brook no delayin the application of remedies. As for us, we cannot expect to bebelieved on our mere _ipse dixit_, and must state our case frankly andfully. The present moment seems timely, before the smoke of conflict hasonce again obscured the broad principles at issue. I propose to dealwith reform in a plea of urgency, endeavouring at the same time to tracethe evolution of things as they are to-day, quoting history as I go, with one aim only in view, to point a moral and adorn a tale. It willserve, I hope, to explain the past, to illustrate the present and toprovide a warning for the future. 

The Irish question, as Lord Rosebery has said, has never passed intohistory, because it has never passed out of politics. 

M. F. J. McD. 

Goldsmith Building, Temple. 

CHAPTER I

THE EXECUTIVE IN IRELAND

 "La 'Garnison' a occupée le pays sans le 'gouverner, ' ou en ne le gouvernant que de son propre interet de classe: son hegemonie a été toute sa politique. "

 --L. PAUL-DUBOIS, _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, 1907. 

 "A regarder de près on percoit pourtant que cette imitation Irlandaise de la justice brittanique n'en est sur bien des points qu'une assez grossiere caricature, ce qui prouve une fois de plus que les meilleures institutions ne vaient que ce que valent les hommes qui les appliquent, et que les lois sent pen de choses quand elles ne sont pas soutenus par les moeurs. "--Ibid. 

"What does Ireland want now; what would she have more?" asked Pitt ofGrattan at the dinner table of the Duke of Portland in 1794, andEnglishmen have echoed and re-echoed the question throughout the centurywhich has elapsed. The mode in which it is asked reminds me, I mustconfess, of that first sentence in Bacon's Essays--"What is truth? saidjesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer. "

When, at the end of the nineteenth century, the nations of Europedevoted themselves to a retrospective study of the progress which thepassing of a hundred years had brought in its train, Ireland alone wasunable to join in the chorus of self-congratulation which arose on everyside. 

To her it was the centenary of the great betrayal to which, as adistinguished writer has said, the whole of her unbribed intellect wasopposed, and which formed the climax to a century of suffering. Theancients who held that when ill-fortune befell their country the godsmust be asleep would have said so, I have no doubt, of Ireland at theend of the eighteenth century. The people, in a phrase which has becomehistoric, had put their money on the wrong horse in their devotion tothe Stuart cause, but, more than this, while they thereby earned thedetestation of the Whigs, they were not compensated for it by thesympathy of the Tories, who feared their Catholicism even more than theyliked their Jacobitism. In this way the country fell between two stools, and was not governed, even as English Statesmen professed to govern it, as a dependency, but rather it was exploited in the interest of theruling caste with an eye to the commercial interests of Great Britain inso far as its competition was injurious. Religious persecution, aimingfrankly at proselytism, and restrictions imposed so as to choke everyindustry which in any way hit English manufactures were the keynotes ofthe whole policy, and in the pages of Edmund Burke one may find a moresearching indictment of English rule in Ireland in the eighteenthcentury than any which has since been drawn up. 

The concession of Parliamentary independence in 1782 was, as the wholeworld knows, yielded as a counsel of prudence in the panic frightresulting from the American war and the French revolution. UnderGrattan's Parliament the country began to enjoy a degree of prosperitysuch as she had never known before, and the destruction of thatParliament was effected, as Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary, himselfexpressed it, by "buying up the fee-simple of Irish corruption"; inother words, by the creation of twenty-six peerages and the expenditureof one and a half million in bribing borough-mongers. 

In very truth, the Act of Union was one which, by uniting thelegislatures, divided the peoples; and it has been pointed out assignificant that when the legislatures of England and Scotland wereamalgamated a common name was found for the whole island, but that nosuch name has been adopted for the three kingdoms which were united in1800. 

The new epoch began in such a way as might have been expected from itsconception. The bigotry of George III. , undismayed by what he used tocall Pitt's "damned long obstinate face, " delayed for more than aquarter of a century the grant of Emancipation to the Catholics, bypromises of which a certain amount of their hostility had been disarmed. The tenantry asked in vain for nearly three-quarters of the century forsome alleviation of the land system under which they groaned, and for anequal length of time three-quarters of the population were forced toendure the tyranny of being bound to support a Church to which they didnot belong. The cause of struggling nationality on the Continent ofEurope, in Italy, in Hungary, in Poland, in the Slav provinces, has ineach case gained sympathy in Great Britain, but the cause of Irishnationality has received far other treatment. That charity should beginat home may be a counsel of perfection, but in point of fact one rarelysees it applied. Sympathy for the poor relation at one's door is a rarething indeed. Increasing prosperity makes nations, as it makes men, moreintolerant of growing adversity, and the poor man is apt to get morekicks than half-pence from the rich kinsmen under the shadow of whosepalace he spends his life, and to whom his poverty, his relationship, and his dependence are a standing reproach. When I hear surpriseexpressed by Englishmen at the fact that England is not loved in IrelandI wonder at the deep-seated ignorance of the mutual feelings which haveso long subsisted, one side of which one may find expressed in theliterature of England, from Shakespeare's references to the "rough, uncivil kernes of Ireland" down to the contemptuous sneers of CharlesKingsley, that most English of all writers in the language, each of whomprovides, as I think, a sure index to the feelings of his contemporariesand serves to illustrate the inveterate sentiment of hostility, flavoured with contempt, which, as Mr. Gladstone once said, has fromtime immemorial formed the basis of English tradition, and in regard towhich the _locus classicus_ was the statement of his great opponent, Lord Salisbury, that as to Home Rule the Irish were not fit for it, for, he went on to say, "nations like the Hottentots, and even the Hindoos, are incapable of self-government. "

A cynical Irish Secretary once asked whether the Irish people blamed theGovernment for the weather; but it must be conceded that the mode ofgovernment made the Irish people more dependent than otherwise theywould have been on climatic conditions, for this reason, that the marginbetween their means and a starvation wage was extremely small, and thusit was that in the middle of the century an act of God broughtsufferings in its train, the results of which have not yet been effaced. Through it all the country was governed not in the interests of themajority, but according to the fiat of a small minority kept in power byarmed force, not by the use of the common law, but of a speciallyenacted coercive code applicable to the whole or any part of the countryat the mere caprice of the chief of the Executive. The record, it mustbe admitted, is not edifying. Irish history, one may well say, is not ofsuch a nature as to put one "on the side of the angels. " Lecky's"History of the Eighteenth Century" has made many converts to Home Rule, and I venture to think that when another Lecky comes to write of thehistory of the nineteenth century the converts which he will make willbe even more numerous. 

Among the anomalies of Irish government there is none greater than thatof the Executive, the head of which is the Viceroy. The position ofthis official is very different from that of the governor of aself-governing colony. If the Viceroy is in the Cabinet his ChiefSecretary is not; but the more common practice of recent years has beenfor the Chief Secretary to have a seat in the Cabinet to the exclusionof the Lord Lieutenant. Whether the latter be in the Cabinet or not hehas no ministers as has a colonial governor, to whose advice he mustlisten because they possess the confidence of a representative body, andmoreover, although the Lord Lieutenant is a Minister of the Crown, hissalary is charged on the Consolidated Fund, with the result that hisacts do not come before the House of Commons on Committee of Supply asdo those of the Chief Secretary on the occasion of the annual vote forhis salary. 

As early as 1823 Joseph Hume ventilated the question of the abolition ofthe Lord Lieutenancy, and a motion introduced by him to that effect in1830 received a considerable measure of support. Lord Clarendon, who in1847 succeeded Lord Bessborough as Viceroy, accepted the office on theexpress condition that the Government should take the first opportunityof removing the anomaly. In pursuance of this agreement Lord JohnRussell, in 1850, introduced a Bill, which was supported by Peel, withthe abolition of the office for its object. On its second reading it waspassed by the House of Commons by 295 votes to 70. In spite of thisenormous majority in its favour the Bill was dropped in an unprecedentedmanner, and never reached the Committee stage owing, it is said, to theopposition of Wellington, who objected to the fact that it would deprivethe Crown of its direct control over the forces in Ireland and to thefact that it would leave the Lord Mayor of Dublin, a person who waselected by a more or less popular vote, as the chief authority in thatcity. 

In 1857 the question was mooted once more, but no action ensued; andagain, on the resignation of Lord Londonderry in 1889, a number of IrishUnionists, headed by the Marquis of Waterford, urged Lord Salisbury toconsider the advisability of abolishing the office, together with theViceregal Court, which a recent French observer has stigmatised as"peuplé de snobs, de parasites et de parvenus. "[1] In the event LordSalisbury, so far from acceding to the request, nominated the Marquis ofZetland to the vacant post, and the proposal to abolish it has not sincebeen raised in public. Men like Archbishop Whately, in the middle of thenineteenth century, whose ambition it was to see what they called theconsolidation of Great Britain and Ireland effected, were strongly infavour of the proposal, and its rejection on so many occasions has beendoubtless due to the fact that to mix and confound the administration ofIreland with that of Great Britain would necessitate the abandonment ofthe extreme centralisation of Irish Government, and those who were mostanxious, as the phrase went, to make Cork like York were the very peoplewho were most opposed to any abdication of Executive powers which anassimilation of methods of government would have inevitably brought inits train. 

The government of Ireland is effected by more than forty boards--theforty thieves the late Mr. Davitt used to call them--and it will be forthe reader, after he has studied the account which I propose to give ofthem, to say whether or not they deserve the name. 

It is nearly twenty years since Mr. Chamberlain, in a celebrated speechat Islington, made the following remarkable declaration:--"I say thetime has come to reform altogether the absurd and irritating anachronismwhich is known as Dublin Castle, to sweep away altogether the alienboards of foreign officials and to substitute for them a genuine Irishadministration for purely Irish business. " Change of opinions, no onecan refuse to admit, in a statesman any more than in other men, and asregards the latter part of the extract which I have quoted Mr. Chamberlain may have changed his views, but it is to the earlier part ofthe sentence that I would refer. There is in it a definite statement offacts which no change in opinion on the part of the speaker could alter, and which express, as well as they can be expressed, the views of theNationalists as to the Castle, the alien boards of foreign officials inwhich remained undisturbed during the course of the seven years afterthe coalition of Unionists and Tories, in which Mr. Chamberlain was themost powerful Minister of the Crown. 

Of the purely domestic branches of the Civil Service in Great Britain, the Treasury, the Home Office, the Boards of Education, of Trade, and ofAgriculture, the Post Office, the Local Government Board, and the Officeof Works, are all responsible to the public directly, throughrepresentative Ministers with seats in the House of Commons, theliability of whom to be examined by private members as to minutiæ oftheir departmental policy is one of the most valuable checks againstofficial incompetence or scandals, and is the only protection under theconstitution against arbitrary rule. The whole administrative machineryof the forty-three boards in Ireland has been represented in Parliamentby one member, the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, but he issupported since a few months ago by the Vice-president of the Departmentof Agriculture. The result is that, while in Great Britain a watchfuleye can be kept on extravagance or mismanagement of the public services, the maintenance of a diametrically opposite system of government inIreland, under which it is impossible to let in the same amount oflight, leads to the bureaucratic conditions of which Mr. Chamberlainspoke in the speech from which I have quoted. 

In answer to these complaints it is usual to point to the case ofScotland as analogous, and to ask why Ireland should complain when theScottish form of government arouses no resentment in that country. Theparallel in no sense holds good, for Scotland has not a separateExecutive as has Ireland, although she has, like Ireland, a separateSecretary in the House of Commons. Scottish legislation generallyfollows that of England and Wales, and in any case Scotland has notpassed through a period of travail as has Ireland, nor have exceptionalremedies at recurring periods in her history been demanded by the socialconditions of the country; and last, but by no means least, one has onlyto look at a list of Ministers of the Crown in the case of thisGovernment, or of that which preceded it, to see that the interests ofScotland are well represented by the occupants of the Treasury Bench, whichever party is in power, so that it is no matter for surprise thatshe is precluded by her long acquiescence from demanding constitutionalchange. 

More than half a century ago Lord John Russell promised O'Connell tosubstitute County Boards for the Grand Jury, in its capacity of LocalAuthority, but the latter survived until ten years ago. The members ofthe Grand Jury were nominated by the High Sheriffs of the Counties, andas was natural, seeing that they were the nominees of a great landlord, they were almost entirely composed of landlords, and the score ofgentlemen who served on these bodies in many instances imposed taxation, as is now freely admitted, for the benefit of their own property on arack-rented tenantry. A reform of this system of local government waspromised by the Liberals in the Queen's Speech of 1881, but so far wasthe powerful Government at that time in office from fulfilling itspledges that not only was no Bill to that effect introduced, but, further, in April, 1883, a Bill to establish elective County Councils, which was introduced by the Irish Party, was thrown out in the House ofCommons by 231 votes to 58. In his famous speech at Newport in 1885, when the Tories were, as all the world thought, coquetting with HomeRule, Lord Salisbury declared that of the two, popular local governmentwould be even more dangerous than Home Rule. He based his view partly onthe difficulty of finding thirty or forty suitable persons in each ofthe thirty-two counties to sit on local bodies, which would be greaterthan that of finding three or four suitable M. P. S for the same divisionsof the country; but, even more than this, he insisted on the fact that alocal body has more opportunity for inflicting injustice on minoritiesthan has an authority deriving its sanction and extending itsjurisdiction over a wider area, where, as he declared, "the wisdom ofthe several parts of the country will correct the folly or mistakes ofone. " In spite of this explicit declaration, when, in the followingyear, the Tories had definitely ranged themselves on the side ofUnionism, the alternative policy to the proposals of Mr. Gladstone wasnothing less than the establishment of a system of popular localgovernment. Speaking with all the premeditation which a full sense ofthe importance of the occasion must have demanded, Lord RandolphChurchill, on a motion for an Address in reply to the Queen's Speechafter the general election of 1886 had resulted in a Unionist victory, made use of these words in his capacity of leader in the House ofCommons:--

"The great sign posts of our policy are equality, similarity, and, if Imay use such a word, simultaneity of treatment, so far as is practicablein the development of a genuinely popular system of local government inall the four countries which form the United Kingdom. "

In 1888 this pledge was fulfilled so far as the counties of England andWales were concerned, and in regard to those of Scotland in thefollowing year. When the Irish members, in 1888, introduced an IrishLocal Government Bill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, as Chief Secretary, opposedit on behalf of the Government, and Lord Randolph Churchill, who atthat time, having "forgotten Goschen, " was a private member, gavefurther effect to the solemnity of the declaration, which, as leader ofthe party, he had made two years before, by his strong condemnation ofthe line adopted by the Chief Secretary in respect of a measure, towhich, as he said, "the Tories were pledged, and which formed thefoundation of the Unionist Party. " In 1892 the Unionist Governmentintroduced, under the care of Mr. Arthur Balfour, a Bill purporting toredeem these pledges. By one clause, which became known as the "put themin the dock clause, " on the petition of any twenty ratepayers a wholeCouncil might be charged with "misconduct, " and, after trial by twojudges, was to be disbanded, the Lord Lieutenant being empowered tonominate, without any form of election, a Council which would succeedthe members who were removed in this manner. The criticism which thisprovision aroused was, as was natural, acute. The _Times_ at thisjuncture declared that to attempt to legislate would be to court danger. The Local Government Bill was abandoned, and in this connection asidelight is shed on the sincerity of the promises which had been made, in a letter from Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Justice FitzGibbon onthis question, dated January 13th, 1892, at the time when the Governmentof 1886 was drawing to a close, and Mr. Balfour was about to introducethe unworkable Bill which was clearly not intended to pass into law. 

"My information, " writes Lord Randolph, "is that a large, influential, and to some extent independent, section of Tories kick awfully againstIrish Local Government, and do not mean to vote for it. This comes froma very knowledgable member of the Government outside the Cabinet. If theGovernment proceed with their project they will either split orseriously dishearten the party, and to do either on the verge of ageneral election would be suicidal. This is what they ought to do. Theyought to say that Irish Local Government is far too large a question tobe dealt with by a moribund Parliament; they ought to say that there isnot sufficient agreement among their supporters as to the nature andextent of such a measure such as would favour the chances of successfullegislation, and that they have determined to reserve the matter for anew Parliament when the mind of the country upon Irish administrationhas been fully ascertained. "[2]

The reflections suggested by this account of the evolution of a measureof party policy cannot be edifying to an Englishman or calculated toappeal as wise statesmanship to an Irishman. For what were the facts? Apolicy denounced as dangerous in the extreme in 1886 by the leader ofthe party was propounded as part of the policy of the same party in thefollowing year with the acquiescence and, one must suppose, theimprimatur of its chief. Two years later pledges were thrown to thewinds, and the excluded minister was provoked to criticism by thedropping of that line of action, of which he himself four years later isfound in a private letter to be advising the abandonment on the mostfrankly avowed grounds of pure partisan tactics. 

Twelve years were allowed to elapse before the promises made by Unionistleaders in the campaign of 1886 were fulfilled by the Local GovernmentAct of 1898, which, for the first time in the history of Ireland, established by law democratic bodies in the country. One feels inclinedto quote, in reference to the history of this question, that phrase ofthe largest master of civil wisdom in our tongue, as some one has calledEdmund Burke, "that there is a way of so withholding as to excitedesire, and of so giving as to excite contempt. "

Under the provisions of the Act, County Councils, Urban DistrictCouncils, and Rural Councils were set up, and some notion of therevolution which it effected may be gathered from the fact that in acountry which had hitherto been governed by the Grand Jury in localaffairs the new Act at a sweep established a Nationalist authority intwenty-seven out of thirty-two counties. 

Under the old _régime_ the landlord used to pay one-half of the poorrate and the occupier the other half. The outcry of the landed interest, that under the County Councils they would be liable to be robbed byexcessive poor rates, resulted in their share being made a charge on theImperial Treasury, by which means they secured a dole of £350, 000 a yearout of the £725, 000 concerned in the financial arrangements under theAct. Of the recipients of this _solatium_ it was pointed out by anobserver that the family motto of the Marquis of Downshire, who wasrelieved under the Act of liabilities to the extent of more than £2, 000, is--"By God and my sword have I obtained"; while that of EarlFitzwilliam, who had to be content with one-half of that amount, is--"Let the appetite be obedient to reason. " The best answer to thepessimists in whom one suspects the wish was father to the thought, whoprophesied disaster from an Act which they declared would open the doorto peculation and jobbery, is to be found in the Local Government BoardReport for 1903, issued on the expiry of the first term of office of theCounty Councils. It expressly declares that in no matter have theCouncils been more successful than in their financial administration, and goes on to say that the introduction of political differences in thegiving of contracts and the appointment of officers has occurred only inquite exceptional cases, and it concludes by declaring its opinion thatthe conduct of their affairs by the various local authorities willcontinue to justify the delegation to them of large powers transferredto their control by the Local Government Acts. 

So much for the working of an Act, of which Lord Londonderry spoke asone "which the Loyalists view with apprehension and dismay. " So far ascertain loss of their supremacy was concerned they might indeed do so, but it is not for Englishmen to throw stones, since events have provedthat it is not in the Irish local bodies, but in some of those of Londonitself, that financial scandals have been rife. 

The one important respect in which the system of local government inIreland differs from that established in England, Scotland, and Wales isthat in the first named country the control of the constabulary is ruledout of the functions of the local bodies, and is still maintained underthe central executive. The plethora of police in the country is one ofthe most striking features that meet the eye of anyone visiting it forthe first time. The observant foreigner who, after travelling inEngland, crosses to Ireland and there sees on every wayside station atleast two policemen varying the _ennui_ of their unoccupied days bywatching the few trains that pass through, feels homely pleasure at thethought that the _octroi_ system which he has missed in England is inforce in Ireland, and supposes that the men in uniform whom he cannotfail to see are the officials of the municipal customs. The tradition inIreland is that half a century ago Smith O'Brien, who was under warrantfor arrest, was detained at the station at Thurles by a railway guard, and that atonement has been made ever since for the absence of police onthat occasion. 

The Royal Irish Constabulary, than whom it would be difficult to find aphysically finer lot of men, is a semi-military force living inbarracks, armed with rifles, bayonets, swords, and revolvers. Well may aFrench writer exclaim--"Combien differents du legendaire et corpulent'bobby, ' cette 'institution populaire' de la Grande Bretagne, " who goeswithout even a truncheon as a weapon of offence. The numbers of theRoyal Irish Constabulary, which were largely increased in the days ofwidespread agitation, are still maintained with scarcely anydiminution. The force, when established just seventy years ago, at atime when the population of the country was nearly eight millions, numbered only 7, 400 men; the population of the island is to-day onlyhalf what it was then, but there are now on the force of theconstabulary 12, 000 men, and 8, 000 pensioners are maintained out of thetaxes. In addition to this, there is a separate body of DublinMetropolitan Police, and smaller bodies in Belfast and Derry are alsomaintained. The Dublin police force costs nearly six times as much perhead of population as does that of London. It comprises 1, 200 men, andthere has been a remarkable increase in cost in the last twenty years, rising to its present charge of £160, 950, with no apparent correspondingincrease in numbers or in pay. The total cost of the police system ofIreland is one and a half million pounds per annum; that of Scotland, with an almost equal population, is half a million sterling. Toappreciate the point of this it must be realised that the indictableoffences committed in Ireland in a year are in the proportion of 18 ascompared with 26 committed in Scotland, while criminal convicts are inthe ratio of 13 in Ireland to 22 in Scotland. 

Such a state of things as this, by which the cost of police per head ofpopulation is no less than 7s. , has only been maintained by the busyefforts, which Lord Dunraven denounced a couple of years ago, of thosewho paint a grossly exaggerated picture of Ireland, so as "to suggest toEnglishmen that the country is in a state of extreme unrest and seethingwith crime. " The columns of the English Unionist Press show the mannerin which these impressions are disseminated, and there is in London abureau for the supply of details of examples of violence in Ireland forthe consumption of English readers. The Chief Secretary, in the House ofCommons last session, spoke of the fact that he received large numbersof letters of complaint, purporting to come from different sufferersfrom violence and intimidation in Ireland, but which, on closeexamination, turned out to be signed by one man. The recent disgracefulattempt to beat up prejudice on the part of the _Daily Graphic_, whichreproduced what purported to be not the photograph of an actualmoonlighting scene, but a photograph of "the real moonlighters, whoobligingly re-enacted their drama for the benefit of our photographer, "incurred the disgust which it deserved; but it was only one instance ofan organised campaign of bruiting abroad invented stories of lawlessnessin Ireland which constitutes the deliberate policy of the "carrioncrows, " whose action Mr. Birrell so justly reprobated, and of which themost flagrant instances were the purely fictitious plots to blow up theExhibition in Dublin; an outrage at Drumdoe, which on investigationproved to be the work of residents in the house which was supposed to beattacked, and the allegation of a dynamite outrage at Clonroe, in CountyCork, which the police reported had never occurred. One would havethought that the experience which the _Times_ and the Loyal Irish andPatriotic Union gained at the hands of Richard Pigott would at leasthave made people chary of this form of propaganda. The comparison of thecriminal statistics of Ireland with those of Scotland which I have madeshows how much truth there is in the imputations of widespreadlawlessness, as does also the number of times on which in each year theJudges of Assize comment favourably on the presentment of the GrandJury; and, moreover, the closing of unnecessary prisons which is goingon throughout the country is a further proof, if any be needed, of thefalsity of the charges which are so industriously spread abroad. Theonly gaol in the County of Wexford was closed a few years ago; that atLifford, the only one in the County of Donegal, has since been closed assuperfluous. Of the two which existed till recently in CountyTipperary, that at Nenagh is now occupied as a convent, in which theSisters give classes in technical instruction to the girls of theneighbourhood; but perhaps the most piquant instance is to be found inWestmeath, where an unnecessary gaol at Mullingar, having been for sometime closed, is now used for the executive meetings of the local branchof the United Irish League. All these, it should be noted, are to befound in districts which are inhabited not by "loyal and law-abiding"Unionists, but by a strongly Nationalist population. 

Enough insistence has not been laid on one important fact in theadministration of the criminal law in Ireland. In England anyone whoalleges that he has been wronged can institute a criminal process, andthis is a frequent mode of effecting prosecutions. In Ireland the socialconditions in the past have brought it about that the investigation andprosecution of crime is left to the police, who, as a result, haveattained something of the protection which _droit administratif_ throwsover police and magistrates in France and other Continental countries, by which State officials are to a large extent protected from theordinary law of the land, are exempted from the jurisdiction of theordinary tribunals, and are subject instead to official law administeredby official bodies. 

The principles on which it is based in countries where it forms anactual doctrine of the constitution are the privilege of the State overand above those of the private citizen, and, secondly, the _separationdes pouvoirs_ by which, while ordinary judges ought to be irremovableand independent of the Executive, Government officials ought, _qua_officials, to be independent to a great extent of the jurisdiction ofthe ordinary courts, and their _actes administratifs_ ought not to beamenable to the ordinary tribunals and judges. The absorption by theconstabulary of the conduct of prosecutions has tended towards such astate of things as this; but a far more potent factor in the samedirection has been the confusion of administrative and judicialfunctions which the relations of the resident magistrates to the policehave engendered, and to an even greater degree has this tendency beenaccentuated in the case of the special "removable" magistrates appointedin proclaimed districts under the Coercion Acts, for they are officialsin whom the judicial and the constabulary functions are inextricablyconfounded. That this suspicion of officialism detracts from theauthority of the police force in popular esteem is undoubted. Theircomplete dissociation from popular control, the fact that they receiveextra pay for any work performed for local bodies, in addition torewards received from the Inland Revenue for the detection of illicitstills, and the fact the only connection of police administration withlocal bodies occurs when any county is called upon to pay for theadditional force drafted into it on account of local disturbance, allexert their influence in the same direction. 

That the same curse of extravagance extends to the judiciary in Irelandone would expect from the fact that the number of the High Court Judgesis greater than in Scotland, though, as we have seen, the population issmaller and the crime is less. According to a statement made by theFinancial Secretary to the Treasury a few months ago the salaries of thejudges of the Superior Courts charged on the Consolidated Fund amount to1s. 1d. Per head of population in England and Wales, to 2s. 8d. Per headin Scotland, to no less a sum than 3s. 3d. Per head in Ireland. And thisdiscrepancy in cost occurs at a time when the complaint in England isthat there are not enough judges of the King's Bench, while in Irelandtheir numbers are excessive. 

The difference between the attitude of the judiciary in England and inIreland is to be seen from the fact that M. Paul-Dubois, after quotingwith approval the Comte de Franqueville's tribute to the fact that thesumming up of a judge in England is a model of impartiality, goes on tosay that in Ireland, "c'est trop souvent un acte d'accusation. "

The fact is that in Ireland, where the salaries of judges are higherthan the incomes earned by even the most successful barristers, thejudiciary has become to an extent far greater than in England a place ofpolitical recompense for Unionist Members of Parliament, who, unliketheir English brethren, carry their political prejudices with them onappointment to the Bench. As recently as 1890 Mr. Justice Harrison, atGalway Assizes, asked why the garrison did not have recourse to Lynchlaw, and until his death Judge O'Connor Morris, unchecked by eitherparty when in power, month by month contributed articles to the reviews, in which he denounced in unmeasured terms the provisions of Acts ofParliament which, in his capacity of Judge of a Civil Bill or CountyCourt, he was called upon to apply. 

The jury system is discredited in Ireland by every possible means. Manycrimes, which in England are classed as felonies, have been statutorilyreduced to misdemeanours in Ireland so as to limit the right ofchallenge possessed by the accused from twenty jurors to six, and at thesame time, after Lord O'Hagan's Act had withdrawn from the sheriff thepower of preparing jury lists, which he used for political purposes; byresuscitating a common law right of the Crown which has not been used inEngland for fifty years, arbitrarily to order jurors to "stand aside, "the provisions of O'Hagan's Act have been evaded, and a panel hostile tothe accused is most frequently secured. 

The natural protection by which the balance is artificially redressedwhen the application of the laws has not the sympathy of those who aresubject to them is a common symptom in every country and every age. Whenall felonies were capital offences in England, the wit of juries, bywhat Blackstone called "a kind of pious perjury, " was engaged indevising means by which those who were legally guilty could escape fromthe penalty; and if it be true that an unpacked jury would possibly inmany instances of political offences in Ireland have a prejudice infavour of the accused, the inference is not consequently to be drawnthat the ends of justice can only be secured by substituting, as isdone, a jury which has a prejudice against him. It is not by methodslike these that are inspired sentiments, such as those which promptedVictor Hugo eloquently to describe a tribunal:--"Ou dans l'obscurité, lalaideur, et la tristesse, se degageait une impression austère etauguste. Car on y sentait cette grande chose humaine qu'on appelle laloi, et cette grande chose divine qu'on appelle la justice. "

CHAPTER II

THE FINANCIAL RELATIONS BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND

 "It will not do to deny the obligation. The case (of Ireland's alleged over-taxation) has been heard before a competent tribunal, established and set up by England. The verdict has been delivered; it is against England and in favour of Ireland's contention. Until this verdict is set aside by a higher court, and a more competent tribunal, the obligation of England to Ireland stands proved. "

 --T. W. RUSSELL, _Ireland and the Empire_. 

The contrast between the history of Great Britain and that of Irelandduring the last century--in the one case showing progress andprosperity, advancing, it is not too much to say, by leaps and bounds, and in the other a stagnation which was relatively, if not absolutely, retrograde--is one of the most dismal factors in English politics. Thosewho would explain it by natural, racial, or religious considerations areprobing too deep for an explanation which is in reality much closer athand. If the external forces in the two countries throughout that periodhad been the same it would be right and proper to search for anexplanation in such directions as have been named, but that these forceshave not been so distributed it is my contention to prove. 

The closing years of the eighteenth century in Ireland, coinciding asthey did with the achievement of Parliamentary independence, witnessedin that country a remarkable growth of national prosperity. Up to theyear 1795 the taxation of the country never exceeded one and a halfmillions of pounds, and the National Debt was not more than one million. In the succeeding years the French war and the rebellion of '98 swelledthe expenditure, as did the maintenance of an armed force in thecountry, which was the corollary of the rebellion, and that processwhich Lord Cornwallis, the Lord Lieutenant, described as "courting thosewhom he longed to kick, " by which the Act of Union was passed, addedanother million and a half to the national expenditure. 

The result of the various causes was that in the year 1799-1800 thetaxation of the country had risen to three millions, and the NationalDebt amounted to just under four millions of pounds. 

It is necessary to enter into these details, because it was on the basisof the years 1799-1800, and not on that of a year of normal expenditure, such as was 1795, that Pitt and Castlereagh framed the financial clausesof the Act of Union, which were to establish the taxable relationsbetween Great Britain and Ireland. 

Having said so much we need not pause to consider how far the financialclauses were justified. It will suffice to say that they provided thatIreland should pay two-seventeenths of the joint expenditure of theUnited Kingdom, together with the annual charge upon her pre-union debt. One should add, however, that the Irish House of Lords protested thatthe relative taxable capacities of Ireland and England did not bear toeach other the ratio which the Act enunciated of 1 to 7-1/2, but inreality of 1 to 18. 

It was no part of Pitt's scheme that there should be fiscal union. Aseparate Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer, drawing up an Irish budgetand regulating an Irish debt, remained after the union of thelegislatures. Speaking in 1800 on this very point Lord Castlereaghdeclared that:--

"It must be evident to every man that if our manufactures keep pace inadvancement for the next twenty years with the progress they have madein the last twenty, they may at the expiration of it be fully able tocope with the British, and that the two kingdoms may be safely left likeany two countries of the same kingdom to a free competition. "

The seventh article of the Act of Union, which comprised the financialproposals of the Act, has been summarised as follows in the report of aRoyal Commission, to which we shall have occasion to refer later:--

"Ireland and Great Britain had entered into legislative partnership onthe clear understanding that they were still, for the purposes oftaxation, to be regarded as separate and distinct entities. Ireland wasto contribute to the common expenditure in proportion to her resources, so far as the same could be ascertained, and even after the impositionof indiscriminate taxation, if circumstances permitted, she might claimspecial exemptions and abatements. "

We have seen how the taxation of Ireland at the time of the Union wasthree millions. Five years later the figure had risen to four millions, and it went on increasing at this rate until in 1815 it amounted to noless than six and a half millions, having more than doubled in amount ina space of fifteen years, while during the same time the National Debthad risen from four and a half to ten and a half millions. 

To understand the significance of these figures it must be realised thatthe Napoleonic war was in progress, and that the supply, on the part ofIreland, of provisions at enhanced war prices was the only means bywhich she was able to cope with her increasing liabilities. Theconclusion of the war and the consequent fall in prices accelerated acrisis in Irish finance. Even in the years of plenty not more thanone-half of what the Act of Union proposed could be squeezed out of thecountry, and the balance, which was added to her debt, raised the ratiowhich it bore to that of Great Britain from the proportion of 1 to15-1/2 in 1800 to that of 2 to 17 in 1817. One would have thought thatsuch an increase of debt would have made Ireland less fitted to bearequal taxation with Great Britain, but the statesmen of the day thoughtotherwise, and in 1817 the Exchequers were amalgamated. Even then thefiscal systems of the two countries were not in all respectsassimilated, though in regard to some taxes an equalisation waseffected, as, for example, in the case of tobacco, the duty on theunmanufactured variety of which was raised from 1s. To 3s. Per lb. , while that on cigars and manufactured tobacco was raised from 1s. To16s. Per lb. The manner in which the change affected social conditionsin Ireland at this time may best be illustrated by the fact that thetaxes on commodities, which necessarily hit the poorest classes hardest, rose from 4s. A head per annum in 1790 to 11s. A head per annum in 1820. After the Consolidating Act of 1817 the annual taxation fell to aboutfive millions, abatements and exemptions being made every year. Thetobacco tax and the Stamp Duty of 1842, which realised about £120, 000 ayear, were, it is true, equalised in the two countries, but for manyyears the system of special treatment was pursued. To Sir Robert Peelcredit is due for having refused in 1842 to extend to Ireland the IncomeTax, which he re-imposed in England, and for reducing the duty on Irishwhiskey to its original figure by the remission of an additional 1s. Pergallon which he had imposed. 

Soon after this the country supped full of horrors in the famine of1846-1847. In the decade from 1845 to 1855 more than a quarter ofIreland's population was lost. No sooner did she begin to recover fromthe effects of this visitation than the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealther an almost equally disastrous blow. The absence of an industrial sidewhich she might develop, as did England, the almost complete dependenceon agriculture, joined to the enfeebled condition in which the leanyears had left her, made the adoption at this moment of the principle ofFree Trade--in her case--deplorable. Nor was this all. It was at thismoment that the opportunity was taken by Mr. Gladstone, at that timeChancellor of the Exchequer, to reverse the discriminative policy uponwhich Peel had so strongly insisted. 

The Income Tax was applied to Ireland in 1853 at the rate of seven pencein the pound. Ten years later it had risen to seventeen pence. At thesame time an additional duty of eight pence a gallon on Irish whiskeywas exacted, which in two years was multiplied fourfold, while in 1858Disraeli assimilated for the first time the whiskey duty in the twoislands by raising it in Ireland to 8s. A gallon. The result of this newdeparture in taxation may be summarised by saying that the Irish revenuewas raised from just under five millions in 1850 to nearly eightmillions in 1860, and that, too, at a time when, of all others, herdistress demanded special treatment and care. 

Although the process of assimilation was carried far in 1853 and thesubsequent years, fiscal unity has never been completely effected. Tothis day Ireland secures exemption from the Land Tax, the InhabitedHouse Duty, the Railway Passenger Duty, and the tax on horses, carriages, patent medicines, and armorial bearings. It will be said, nodoubt, that Ireland ought to show due gratitude for these exemptions, but though they raise collectively a sum of £4, 000, 000 by theirincidence in England, Scotland, and Wales, it is calculated that ifapplied to Ireland they would bring in not more than £150, 000 a year, asum so small that one may ask whether it would bear the cost ofcollecting. 

By way of set-off to the imposition of income tax, which it should benoted was at the time said to be "temporary, " Mr. Gladstone wiped out acapital debt of four millions, but it must be pointed out that, in thefifty years which have ensued, a sum of between twenty millions andthirty millions has been collected in Ireland as income tax. Objectioncannot--beyond a certain point--be taken to the incidence of this tax, seeing that it does not fall upon the poorest classes, and that nocountry benefits more than does Ireland from the substitution of directfor indirect taxation. But what does call for censure is that itsapplication was not made an occasion for the remission of other taxes. 

In 1864 the Conservative Government recognised the serious problem ofthe unequal incidence of taxation in the two islands, and appointed acommittee to consider their financial relations. Sir Stafford Northcote, the chairman of this committee, declared that, notwithstanding the factthat they were both subject to the same taxation, "Ireland was the mostheavily taxed and England the most lightly taxed country in Europe. "Twenty-five years later Mr. Goschen, the Conservative Chancellor of theExchequer, consented to the appointment of another Committee on the samesubject, but no report was ever issued. In 1895 a Royal Commission wasappointed, comprising representatives of all political parties, andpresided over by a man of commanding ability in the person of Mr. Childers, a former Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer. The terms ofreference were "to inquire into the financial relations between GreatBritain and Ireland and their relative taxable capacity. " The followingextract will serve to show the conclusions of the Commissioners:--

"In carrying out the inquiry we have ascertained that there are certainquestions upon which we are practically unanimous, and we think itexpedient to set them out in this report. Our joint conclusions on thesequestions are as follows:--

"(1) That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purposes of thisinquiry, be considered as separate entities. 

"(2) That the Act of Union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, asevents showed, she was unable to bear. 

"(3) That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland between 1853 and1860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances. 

"(4) That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involveequality of burden. 

"(5) That whilst the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventhof that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland isvery much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceedingone-twentieth. "

It is difficult to conceive a more damning indictment of English rule inIreland. One cannot help recalling the glowing promises of Pitt in1800:--

"But it has been said, 'What security can you give to Ireland for theperformance of the conditions?' If I were asked what security wasnecessary, without hesitation I should answer 'None. ' The liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of England have never yet beenfound deficient. "

One is reminded of Dr. Johnson's remark to an Irishman who discussedwith him the possibility of the union of the Parliaments:--

"Do not make a union with us, sir; we should unite with you only to robyou. "

It is a striking testimony to the fact that the approach to some men'shearts is through their pockets; that the report of the Commissionersbrought all Ulster into line with the Nationalists. Such a vision of theProtestant lion lying down with the Catholic lamb had not been seensince the Volunteers had mustered in 1778, and then, too, curiouslyenough, the common cause was financial, being the demand for the removalof the commercial restraints on the island. 

A conference was held in 1896, presided over by Col. Saunderson, theleader of the Orangemen, and was attended by all the Irish members, irrespective of party. The outcome was a resolution in the House ofCommons, proposed by Mr. John Redmond, and seconded by Mr. Lecky. Therejoinder of the Government to the demands made was to the effect thatthe postulate of the Commissioners that Ireland and Great Britain must, for the purposes of the inquiry, be considered as separate entitiesstultified the report. 

One cannot characterise this attitude otherwise than as a piece ofspecial pleading. The appointment, not merely of the Royal Commission, but of the Select Committees of 1865 and 1890, presupposed a disparitybetween the conditions in the two countries which not only existed infact but were recognised by law. 

In regard to the Church, the kind, the police, education, and evenmarriage, the laws are different in the two countries; and we have seenhow, in respect of such widely separate things as land, railwaypassengers, and armorial bearings, the systems of taxation are distinct. 

The position of the official Conservatives was well stigmatised by oneof the most distinguished among their own body--Mr. Lecky--when hedeclared that--

"Some people seem to consider Ireland as a kind of intermittentpersonality--something like Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll--an integral partwhen it was a question of taxation, and, therefore, entitled to noexemptions, a separate entity when it was a question of rating, and, therefore, entitled to no relief. "

To the argument that Ireland has no greater claim to relief, on thescore of her poverty, than have the more backward agricultural countiesof England, the answer is that Wiltshire or Somersetshire--shall wesay--have always received equal treatment with the rest of the country, and have never entered into a mutual partnership as did Ireland when shetrusted to the pledges made to her by England, and expressed in theseterms by Castlereagh:--

"Ireland has the utmost possible security that she cannot be taxedbeyond the measure of her comparative ability, and that the ratio of hercontribution must ever correspond with her relative wealth andprosperity. "

The attitude of Ireland in this matter is perfectly plain. Whiledeprecating in the strongest terms the means by which the Union wascarried, she is prepared, so long as it remains in force, to abide byits terms. It partakes of the nature of what lawyers call a bilateralcontract, imposing duties and obligations on both sides, and theseliabilities can only be removed--as in the case of the DisestablishedIrish Church--by the consent of both the contracting parties to thetreaty. 

The spectacle of the richest country in Europe haggling over shekelswith the poorest is a sight to give pause, while Great Britain'sinsistence upon her pound of flesh is the more unpardonable becauseIreland declares that it is not in the bond. That the highest estimateof the taxable capacity of Ireland arrived at by the Commissioners wasone-twentieth, while the actual revenue contribution of Ireland wasone-eleventh of the total for the United Kingdom, throws much light uponthe social conditions of the smaller island. The rate of taxation perhead per annum went up in the second half of the nineteenth century morethan 250 per cent. --rising from about £1 in 1850 to more than £2 10s. In1900. This occurred simultaneously with a diminution of population inthe same period from seven millions to four and a half millions, achange which is in glaring contrast with the concurrent increase inGreat Britain from twenty millions in 1850 to more than thirty-eightmillions at the present day. Whatever may be the other causes which haveled to the stream of emigration from Ireland it may certainly be claimedthat not least among them is the ever-increasing incidence of taxationwhich is year by year laying a greater burden upon the privilege ofliving in that country. 

A recent Report, issued by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, gives statistics with reference to the earnings of agriculturallabourers throughout the three kingdoms. It concludes that on an averagea labourer in England obtains 18s. 3d. A week, in Wales 17s. 3d. , inScotland 19s. 3d. , and in Ireland 10s. 11d. It may be noted that in noEnglish county is the average lower than 14s. 6d. , while in Ireland inseven counties it is less than 10s. , Mayo being the lowest with anaverage wage of 8s. 9d. The present writer has had occasion in thecourse of the last few months to hear old men on political platforms ina typical English agricultural constituency pointing a moral from theirown or their fathers' recollections of the days before the Corn Lawswhen wages ran from 8s. To 9s. A week. What is recalled with horror inEngland as the state of affairs in the "hungry forties" is the presentcondition in several of the Irish counties. It would be idle to multiplyproofs to show the desperate condition of the country. Even in the tenyears which have elapsed since the issue of the Report of the RoyalCommission the taxation of the country has increased by more than twoand a half million pounds, while the population, it is estimated, has inthe same period diminished by no less than 200, 000. On the assumptionarrived at by the Commissioners, that the proper share which Irelandshould pay was one-twentieth of the contribution of Great Britain, thecountry was overtaxed ten years ago to the extent of two andthree-quarter millions; yet in spite of that fact in the course of thoseten years two millions of additional taxation has been imposed. Twoyears ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to an inquiry, announced to the House of Commons that in the year 1903-4, the latestfor which figures were available, the proportions of tax revenue derivedfrom direct and indirect taxes were:--

 Great Britain Ireland Direct Taxes 50. 6 per cent. 27. 8 per cent. Indirect Taxes 49. 4 per cent. 72. 2 per cent. 

These figures show very clearly to what an extent in Ireland taxationfalls, not on the luxuries of the rich, but on the commodities which areto a great extent the necessaries of the poor. The manner in which thisstate of things is maintained was expressed by Sir Robert Giffen in hisevidence before the Royal Commission:--

"It is only evident that in matters of taxation Ireland is virtuallydiscriminated against by the character of the direct taxes which happento be on articles of Irish consumption. "

The heavy duties on tea, tobacco, and alcohol--articles which form alarger part of the family budget of the Irish peasant than of theEnglish labourer--are the causes of this burden. The reasons for thelarger consumption of what may be roughly called stimulants by theIrishman is undoubtedly to be found in climatic conditions, and also inthe smaller amount of nourishing food which he is able to afford. Withregard to alcohol, the form in which it is most used in England--namely, beer--is subjected to a special exemption at the expense of thewhiskey-drinking people of Ireland and Scotland. Cider is not taxed. Thetax on whiskey is between two-thirds and three-fourths its price, whilethat on beer is one-sixth of its price; so that sixty gallons of beerbear the same weight of taxation as does one gallon of whiskey. Theusual standard of taxation of liquor is its alcoholic strength, but thespecial treatment accorded to the Englishman's principal drinkreduced--according to the Royal Commissioners--the taxation to which, inproportion to its alcohol it should be subjected, from 1s. To 2d. Pergallon. Even in respect of tea and tobacco, the inequitable treatment ofIreland is obvious to any one who considers that what is spoken of asequality of taxation is, in reality, identical taxation on articlesconsumed in vastly different proportions in Great Britain and Ireland. 

The argument by which the charge that Ireland is overtaxed was rebuttedby the late Unionist Government was that the balance is restored by theamount of money spent in the administration of that country. When thecomplaint is heard that she is contributing at this day no less a sumthan, £9, 750, 000 to revenue, the answer is made that she has no grievancesince the cost of Irish services amounts to more than £7, 500, 000, thebalance, a paltry two and a quarter millions, forming her Imperialcontribution. 

Ireland is being bled to death, and to her complaints the answer is thatshe is being expensively administered. To fleece a poor man of hispittance and to justify the action by telling him that it is on everyappurtenance of a spendthrift to which he objects that it is being spentis scarcely to provide a satisfactory justification. The two cases areexactly parallel, and it is a weak position which has to entrench itselfbehind the fact that the cost of government per head is in Irelanddouble what it is in England. 

The country is against its will saddled with a Viceregal Court, of whichthe Lord Lieutenant enjoys a salary twice as great as that of thePresident of the United States. The government is conducted by more thanforty boards, only one of which is responsible, through a Minister inthe House of Commons, to the country. Official returns show thatScotland, with a population slightly larger than that of Ireland, possesses 942 Government officials as against 2, 691 in Ireland. InScotland the salaries of these public servants amount to less than£300, 000, while in Ireland the corresponding cost is more than£1, 000, 000 per annum, showing that the average salaries in the poorercountry are considerably higher than in the richer. Of the £7, 500, 000devoted to Irish services, £1, 500, 000 goes to the Post Office andCustoms, while one half of the remainder is consumed by the salaries andpensions of policemen and officials. 

To take a single example--the Prison Boards of Scotland and Ireland workunder identical Acts, dating from 1877. It is instructive, therefore, to compare the conditions of the two. The estimates for the year 1905were calculated on the assumption that there were 120 fewer prisoners aday in Irish prisons than in Scotland. In spite of this the cost of theIrish Board for the last year of which I have seen the figures was£144, 597, and that of the Scottish Board was only £105, 588. The ratiobetween these figures is as 1. 3 to 1, which is in nearly the sameproportion as is the number of the officials on the two boards--namely, 622 in Ireland and in Scotland 467, and this, too, in spite of the factthat further statistics show, namely, that there are five convictedcriminals in Scotland for every three in Ireland. 

These are a few facts which show the value of the case for the presentstate of affairs, based on the assumption that over-taxation is balancedby profligate expenditure. The maintenance--to take only one point--of apolice force about half the size of the United States army, when at thepresent time white gloves--the symbol of a crimeless charge--are beinggiven to the judges on every circuit, is a state of affairs which isintolerable, while the small proportion which in the returns Ireland isshown to bear of the Imperial contribution is the result of theinclusion of the Viceregal and Civil Service charges, not, as should bethe case, in the Imperial account, but in the separate Irish account. 

As an instance showing how exorbitant exactions defeat their own end bydiminishing, and not raising, the available revenue, it should be notedthat in 1853 an income tax of 7d. In the pound raised £200, 000 more thandid an income tax of 8d. In the pound at the date of the RoyalCommission. Of the remedies which are suggested, the alteration of theFiscal system, by making abatements in the Irish Excise and Customs, isnot likely to be attempted. Reduction of expenditure, liberating moneywhich may be made to serve a useful purpose, is obviously the firststep, but any scheme of allocation of large sums for Irish development, without full and proper financial control, will undoubtedly fail to meetthe case. The multiplication of irresponsible boards must be stopped, and to what extent anything, save economies in expenditure, can beeffected without far larger changes remains a moot point. Of one thing, at any rate, one may be certain--the present Liberal Government when inOpposition joined forces with the Irish members in driving home thetremendous admissions of the Royal Commissioners, and it is impossibleto think that, now they are in power, they will repudiate theirobligations, the more so as the present Chancellor of the Exchequer lastyear announced the intention of the Government to see how far it ispossible to adjust the financial relations between the two kingdoms on afairer basis. 

Sir Hercules Langrishe, the friend and correspondent of Edmund Burke, issaid to have accounted for the swampy condition of the Phoenix Park bysaying--"The English Government are too much engaged in _draining_ therest of the kingdom to find time to attend to it. "

Enough has been said to show that the process of which Sir Herculesspoke is still going on. One would have thought that counsels ofprudence would have made an end of it. It remains to be seen whether theuncontestable facts to which they themselves have subscribed willprevail with the Government. "The liberality, the justice, the honour ofthe people of England" are concerned in it now, as truly as when Pittspoke. Moreover, it is one of the instances in which the claims ofjustice and of expediency coincide. The findings of the FinancialRelations' Commission fully justified the attitude of the Irish Party tothe proposal, under Mr. Gladstone's Bill, that the Irish contribution tothe Imperial Treasury should be one-fourteenth of that of Great Britain, while Mr. Parnell declared that it ought to have been one-twentieth. The population, since the publication of the Report of the Commission, has decreased by a quarter of a million, but taxation has increasedfrom, £7, 500, 000 to £10, 500, 000. If Ireland had secured the fixedcontribution, against the height of which she protested, she wouldnevertheless have been guarded from such a disproportionate rise oftaxation. 

Whatever test be taken, be it population, a comparison of exports and ofimports, the consumption of certain dutiable articles, relativeassessments to death duties, income tax, or the estimated value ofcommodities of primary importance consumed, every one of them shows therelative backwardness of Ireland as compared with Great Britain, in viewof which the fact that the cost of government per head of population isdouble in Ireland what it is in England, shows the extent to which theone is liable in damages to the other. The increased expenditure on thenavy obviously does not benefit equally the two countries, of which theone only has dockyards and manufactories, and this is especially thecase seeing that the country which lacks these things is also without acommerce needing defence; while any advantage resulting from a portionof the army being quartered in Ireland is minimised when it is foundthat arms and accoutrements are purchased in England. 

The attempt to stultify the findings of the Commission on the groundthat its report was based on a fallacy, since Ireland has no more rightto be considered as a separate entity than an English county, isremarkably disingenuous in view of the acknowledgment of this in theseparate treatment which she received in the matter of grants made inrelief of local taxation and for the establishment of free education inthe years 1888 and 1890 and 1891. Moreover, it was impliedly admittedthat she was a separate entity in the appointment of a Select Committeeon taxation in 1864, and again by Lord Goschen in 1890, and the wholehistory of her separate legislation bears the same construction. Onecannot give a better commentary on what has been seen of the economiccondition of the island than by quoting the peroration of the speech ofJohn Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, the "great father of the Union, "speaking in the Irish House of Parliament:--"It is with a cordialsincerity and a full conviction that it will give to this, my nativecountry, lasting peace and security for her religion, her laws, herliberty, and her property, an increase of strength, riches, and trade, and the final extinction of national jealousy and animosity, that I nowpropose to this grave assembly for their adoption an entire and perfectUnion of the Kingdom of Ireland with Great Britain. If I live to see itcompleted, to my latest hour I shall feel an honourable pride inreflecting on the little share I may have in contributing to effect it. "

CHAPTER III

THE ECONOMIC CONDITION OF IRELAND

 "When the inhabitants of a country leave it in crowds because the government does not leave them room in which to live, that government is judged and condemned. "--JOHN STUART MILL, _Political Economy_. 

I have shown something of the incubus of taxation which overpowersIreland from the fact that she--the poorest country in WesternEurope--is bound to the richest in such a manner that the latter has notthe common prudence to recognise the flagitious injustice which she isinflicting, while, by a refinement of cruelty, she repeats herassurances that Ireland is a spoilt child, and for this reason alonedoes not appreciate the blessings of British rule. In the light of thefacts before us one may well ask whether it was an extreme hyperbole ofwhich Grattan made use when he declared that "Ireland, like everyenslaved country, will be compelled to pay for her own subjugation. "

When we are urged to put into practice the counsels of perfection andstudy the virtue of patience while we wait for the opportune moment forreform, from the point of view of English party politics, our reply isthat things have reached so desperate a pass that to submit to thedelays entailed by the exigencies of political strategy is a suicidalpolicy which we cannot afford to endure without protest. 

The inhabitants of Great Britain had their Imperial taxation cut down inthe nineteenth century by one-half, that of the Irish people wasdoubled. Every year that passes without radical change in the relationsbetween the two countries makes it more serious, and makes the changesmore drastic which will be required when the need for them is at lastfully realised. 

At the present day more than ten millions per annum are raised bytaxation in Ireland. Of these seven and a half are spent on the _home_government of the country, which in 1890 cost only just over fivemillions, while that of Scotland at this moment costs a littlemore--namely, five and a half millions. 

If one looks at the case of Denmark one finds a rich agriculturalcountry with a population of six and a half millions, which is able tomaintain her home and foreign government, a Royal Family, a debt, anarmy with a war strength of 70, 000, a fleet, and the expense of threecolonies, on an expenditure of four and a half millions. 

Sweden, to take another case, with a population of six and a halfmillions, a large commerce, and many industries, is able to support herwhole government, army, navy, diplomatic and consular service on abudget of little more than five millions; and the cost of civilgovernment of Belgium, with a greater population and four times thetrade, is one-half that of Ireland. The relative cost of _home_government per head of population, which amounts in Ireland to £1 14s. 3d. , in England and Wales to £1 3s. , and in Scotland to £1 3s. 3d. , illustrates in a striking manner the ruinous condition of the presentincidence in Ireland. 

If this administrative waste is palliated by the statement that itretains money in Ireland, the reply is that the excess of administrativeexpenditure which is included in this sum is enough to effect largemeasures of social reform in the country, the benefit of which is not tobe named in the same breath with the present mode of maintaining anextravagant staff of highly-paid officials. As things are, however, allmotives to secure economies in the Irish services are vitiated by theexisting system by which any economies in Irish administration go, notto Ireland, but to the Imperial Treasury, and in this way economicalgovernment is not merely not encouraged but actually discouraged, andhence it is that one has such contrasts as that to be seen in eachyear's Civil Service Estimates, where, under the item of stationery andpostage in respect of public departments, the amount for the last yearwhich I have seen is, for Scotland £24, 000, and for Ireland, £43, 000, andthat the Department of Agriculture, out of a total income fromParliamentary Grant of £190, 000, spends no less than £80, 000 on salariesand wages, and another £10, 000 on travelling expenses. 

Sir Robert Giffen has calculated that the incomes of the wage-earningclasses in Ireland are, man for man, one-half those of the members ofthe same classes in England. Statistics of every kind bear out thestriking difference in the conditions of the two countries. The averagepoor law valuation in Ireland is about equal to that of the poorest EastLondon Unions, where it is £3. Though the population is betweenone-seventh and one-eighth of that of England, the number of railwaypassengers is one-thirty-seventh, the tons of railway freight isone-seventeenth, the telegrams are one-eighteenth, the postal and moneyorders are one-nineteenth of those of England. 

Ireland, to take another test of prosperity, is the fourthmeat-producing country in the world and the sixteenth meat-eating, whileEngland, by a curious coincidence, is the sixteenth meat-producing, butthe fourth meat-eating, country in the world. The one direction in whichthe extension of the powers and duties of the Executive has often beenurged has not been pursued. I mean the matter of railways. Though in1834 a Royal Commission recommended that Irish railways should be builtwith money from the British Treasury, and should be subject to Statecontrol, nothing was done in the matter. Lord Salisbury and LordRandolph Churchill were in 1886 in favour of the nationalisation ofIrish railways, but at that date again no steps were taken. Mr. Balfour, it is true, when Chief Secretary, secured the passing of the LightRailways Act, under which powers were obtained to open up the CongestedDistricts by means of light railways, such as those which have beenbuilt to Clifden, in County Galway, and to Burtonport, in CountyDonegal. But the policy which was followed in this Act was to build therailway out of a Treasury grant, and after it had been built to hand itover to one of the existing railway companies. 

There are to-day 3, 000 odd miles of railway in Ireland--a mileagescarcely exceeding that of a single company, the Great Western Railway, in England. They are owned by nearly thirty companies, each with aseparate staff of directors and salaried officials, the directors alonebeing over 130 in number. The railways of the country are, withoutexception, notoriously bad, the delay and dislocation incident to thetransfer of goods from one line to another, and the high rates whichprevail, inevitably serve to impede any traffic in goods, especially ifthey are of a perishable character. 

It is not traffic that makes communications, but cheap communicationsthat make traffic. The Belgian Government, fifty years ago, took overthe railways of that country, and reduced the freights to such a degreethat in eight years the quantity of goods carried was doubled, thereceipts of the railways were increased fifty per cent. , and the profitsof the producers were multiplied five-fold. I am not quoting thisinstance by way of plea that the present remedy for the grave economicproblems of Ireland lies in nationalisation of railways. I have saidenough to show the extravagance and irresponsibility of the presentExecutive system, and in view of that no sane man would propose to endowit with further powers than those which it already possesses; but letme say this, that if the present state of diffusive impotence whichrules in the matter of transit in the country continues, some verydrastic remedies may before long have to be devised. 

The cheapest freights for grain in the world are those between Chicagoand New York, and the reason why this is so is that there exists keencompetition on the part of the inland waterways. Of the 580 miles ofcanals in Ireland a considerable part are owned by the railwaycompanies, and their weed-choked condition shows the use to which theyare put in the national economy. 

Whoever it was that said the carriers of freight hold the keys of tradewas stating what appears almost an axiom, and an illustration isafforded of the results of reduced rates in an analogous business in theway in which the establishment of penny postage sent up the receipts ofthe General Post Office. 

The difference in the freights in the three kingdoms may be seen by acomparison of the average rate per ton of merchandise in the year 1900--

 In England In Scotland In Ireland

 4s. 10. 26d. 4s. 11. 64d. 6s. 7. 90d. 

In the decade from 1890-1900 the figure in England and Wales decreased8. 79d. , in Scotland 1. 7d. , and in Ireland increased by 1. 92d. 

Again, the control of the great English railway corporations over thesmall companies in Ireland has led to a state of things by whichfreights for imported goods are relatively lower than are those forpurely internal carriage, and by this means the railways of GreatBritain maintain their grip of the carrying trade, and incidentallydestroy the industry of Ireland. 

The trade of Ireland is not two per cent. Of that of the three kingdoms, and this policy of swamping the Irish market with English-made goods atlow rates to such an extent that over twelve million pounds' worth ofimported goods are sold annually in Ireland shows the manner in whichthe principles of free trade are applied to that country; and so it hascome to pass that the opening up of the country by railways has oftentended to destroy local industries and to substitute for their productsarticles manufactured in England and Continental Europe at a cheapercost, carried in either case by English railways, which, in consequence, reap the benefit of the freight. The carriage per ton paid by eggs toLondon, to take one example, is 16s. 8d. From Normandy, 24s. FromDenmark, and no less that 94s. From Galway. 

The bearing of the transit question on the agricultural problem is seenby a consideration of the rates for every form of farm produce, which inIreland are fifteen to twenty per cent. Of their value. On the Continentthe average is five to six per cent. , and in the United States andCanada it is three per cent. The discouragement of such a tariff toagricultural enterprise has had a great bearing on the transformation ofplough land into cattle ranches, and the extent to which this hasoccurred may be seen from the fact that there are to-day twelve millionacres of pasture to three millions of arable land in the island, andfertile land, like that of the plains of Meath, is to be seen growing, not corn for men, but grass for cattle. The success of the country instock-raising may very easily be rendered nugatory if the exclusion ofArgentine and Canadian cattle from the English market be ended by thepassing of an Act giving the Board of Agriculture a discretionary powerto maintain or remove the embargo on their importation, according as thedanger of an introduction of cattle disease exists or disappears. Theenormous import trade which is done in Danish butter, Italian cheese, and even Siberian eggs, shows the commercial possibilities of farmproduce when freights are low. As a tangible example of thediscrimination which the railways pursue may be mentioned the fact thatthe freight for goods per ton from Liverpool to Cavan is 10s. 8d. , whilethat from Cavan to Liverpool is 16s. 8d. The numbers employed onagriculture have diminished, not only in proportion to the populationbut also relatively to its decrease. According to Mr. Charles Booth landemploys as many people to-day in England as it did in 1841, and itprobably supports nearly as many, and though in that country, buildingand manufacture employ a vast number more, in Ireland there has been inthe same time a decrease of nearly eleven per cent. Of those soemployed--the total decrease being 626, 000. 

The population of England has in the last century been multiplied byfour, that of Scotland has increased threefold, while that of Irelandhas decreased by one-fourth. If we take the last sixty years it will beseen that the people of England have doubled their numbers, but those ofIreland have divided by two. It would be idle to pretend that the greatexodus which took place after the famine was in all respects to beregretted. The abnormal increase in population which took place in thefirst forty years of the nineteenth century was in itself out of allproportion to the increase of productive capacity in the country, andwas closely related to the unnatural inflation of prices, and consequentspurious appearance of prosperity, due to the great war. When the climaxcame this was rapidly followed by a reaction, and when emigrationreduced the numbers of eight million people who were in the island in1841, the modified competition in the labour market and in the landmarket tended to restore prices to a normal figure. 

Emigration was at one time a well-recognised remedy with Englishstatesmen for Irish ills. Did not Michael Davitt once say that manaclesand Manitoba were the two cures for Ireland which they could propose?Even then, no attempt was made to regulate emigration by the State. Theball which was thus set rolling at that date has been in motion eversince, and that which half a century ago was regarded as the hand of the_deus ex machina_ setting right a grave economic problem has continued, so that it has become at this day a problem no less grave, which to anequal degree presses for solution. 

Four million people in the last sixty-five years fled from the country, and though the figures, as they are published, seem to show a slightdecrease each year, the apparent diminution is to a large extentfallacious, since the residue of population from which emigrants aredrawn becomes each year less, and an apparent decrease may in truth be arelative increase. 

We heard much a few years ago in England of the evils of immigrationinto the British Isles of aliens, whom the Board of Trade returns showamount to eight thousand per annum--a figure which appears paltry whencompared with the forty thousand people who leave Ireland every year. Itis a cry which one is told should make the thirty-seven millioninhabitants of England and Scotland burn with indignation that thisnumber of foreigners land on their shores every year. Surely we Irishmenhave a far greater cause of complaint in the fact that out of apopulation of four and a half millions, less than is that of London, anumber greater than those of a town of the size of Limerick emigrateevery year. Most of these emigrants are in the prime of life. Theiraverage age is from twenty to twenty-five, and more than ninety percent. Are between the ages of ten and forty-five years. Here is thecrucial fact, that it is the young, the active, and the plucky who arebeing tempted by promises of success abroad, to which they see nolikelihood of attaining at home, and in this way is established a systemof the survival of the unfittest, an artificial selection of the mostmalignant kind, which is leaving the old, the infirm, the poor, and theunadventurous behind to swell the figures of pauperism and to propagatethe race. All the authorities are agreed in attributing to this causethe lamentable increase of lunacy, which is one of the most terriblefactors in the economy of modern Ireland. The last Census report showsthe total number of lunatics and idiots to have been in 1851 equal to aratio of 1 in 637 of the population, and to be in 1901 equal to a ratioof 1 in 178. The proportion is, as one would expect, highest in thepurely agricultural districts and lowest in the neighbourhood of cities, such as Dublin and Belfast, where industrial conditions imply betterwages and food, and a less monotonous existence. 

It should be remembered that the proportion of imbeciles in GreatBritain has risen in the period of fifty years as it has inIreland--partly, no doubt, owing to a better system of registration oflunacy--but, at the same time, the fact remains that the average inIreland is very much greater than in England and Wales, rising in someIrish counties to a proportion twice, and in another to a ratio thrice, as high as that of the average of the whole of England and Wales. 

If urban industrial conditions militate against an increase of lunacy, on the other hand it must be remembered that in most Irish towns thereis an appalling amount of overcrowding. The death-rate of Dublin--thehighest of any city in Europe--is, in consequence, no less than 25 per1, 000, as against 16 per 1, 000 in Paris and New York, and 17 per 1, 000in London. The percentage of families, consisting on an average of fourpersons, living in one room is in London 14. 6, in Edinburgh 16. 9, inGlasgow 26. 1, in Cork 10. 6, in Limerick, 15. 8, while in Dublin itreaches the appalling percentage of 36. In Belfast, which, unlike anyother of the cities which I have mentioned, is for the most part modern, the percentage is not higher than 1, and this fact has a very greatbearing on the industrial conditions in that city. Side by side withthese figures may be placed those of the death-rate from tuberculosis, which from 1864 to 1906 in England decreased from 3. 3 per 1, 000 to 1. 6, in Scotland decreased from 3. 6 per 1, 000 to 2. 1, and in Ireland_increased_ from 2. 4 to 2. 7 per 1, 000. 

The rate war of the steamship companies, which reduced the cost ofpassage across the Atlantic in 1904, caused the emigration returns torise from 45, 000 to 58, 000 in a single year, and at the same time therewere employed in Ireland two hundred emigration agents of one companyalone--the Cunard--each of whom received six shillings a head for eachbanished Irishman and Irishwoman whom he got safely out of the country. It is easy for the Irishman to wax eloquent about the exiles who, fromthe time when O'Neil and O'Donnell weighed anchor in Lough Swilly at thevery beginning of the seventeenth century, sailed from their country toseek their fortunes abroad in Church or State or camp, sinceproscription deprived them of the _carrière ouverte aux talents_ athome. The history of the "wild geese" in the service of France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Prussia, and of Russia; of the Irishmen who wererespectively the first Quartermaster-General of the United States Armyand the first Commodore of the United States Navy, or of the seven IrishField Marshals of Austria, or of those who served as Viceroys to Chili, Peru, and Mexico, is the story of the citizens of no mean city. CatholicEurope is flecked with the white graves of the Irish exiles of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries; from Rome to Valladolid, fromDouai to Prague, from Salamanca to Louvain, and from Tournai to Parisyou will find their bones. But the pathos of this is, to my mind, asnothing compared with the pathos of what is occurring now. For onething, it was only men in those days that went in any large numbers, while to-day it is both men and women. From the point of view of Englandthe result has been in no small degree serious. Of the four millionpeople who have emigrated since the great tidal wave began with thefamine, nearly ninety per cent. Have gone, not to British Colonies, butto the United States. Of the fifty thousand who emigrated in 1905 morethan forty-four thousand went to the North-American Republic. 

_Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_; the UlsterProtestants who were driven from their country by the commercialrestrictions of the eighteenth century formed the nucleus of the mostimplacable enemies of Great Britain in the War of Independence--halfWashington's army was recruited from Irishmen in America; and in thesame way the exiles of the nineteenth century became, and have remainedeven to the second generation, irreconcilable adversaries of the systemof government which, by affording for too long no relief to theconditions in Ireland, was responsible for the flight from their home toa land which was, by comparison, flowing with milk and honey. 

Side by side with emigration goes on another factor in the social lifeof the country which is very significant of the stress under which, insome districts, the Irish peasant ekes out an existence. I am referringto the migratory labourers, of whom nearly 18, 000 leave their homes inIreland every year to work in the harvest fields of England andScotland, that they may there secure a wage by which they are able tomake both ends meet in a manner which the uneconomic nature of theirholdings does not permit. How small is the diminution in this annualmigration is seen by the fact that the highest figures in connectionwith it recorded in the last quarter of a century are those of 1880, inwhich year nearly 23, 000 migrated, while within the last six years--in1901--the figures were as high as 19, 700. More than three-quarters ofthese labourers come from Connacht, and of the total number more thanone-half from County Mayo, from which every year 47. 8 per thousand ofthe population migrate, and if one takes the adult malepopulation--_i. E. _, that of men over twenty years of age--one finds thatthe number of migratory labourers represents a proportion of 177. 4 perthousand. Nearly three-quarters of them go to England, and the harvestfields of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire are in a large measure reaped bytheir hands. From February till June the migration occurs, and thelabourers return in the late autumn to their homes. The fact that thesum brought back by them is, at the highest estimate, said to be about£18 after nine months of labour, and that the wages which they earnamount to an average of 17s. A week, while, in addition to the cost ofliving for three-quarters of the year, about £2 is spent on theirrailway fare, all serve to show the nature of the economic conditions inthe West of Ireland which make such a migration for such a wage worthwhile on the part of nearly twenty thousand people. One factor in thisconnection which should be noted is that the number of girls who migrateevery year is said to be increasing, and is estimated to amount tonearly half the total throughout the country. The precariousness of adependence on such a means of subsistence as this, is seen from the factthat a bad harvest in England or a development in agricultural machinerywould put an end to the source of livelihood which it provides. If fromno other point of view the problem should be regarded seriously byEnglishmen in the light of the depopulation of the English countryside, with its direct bearing upon the material for recruiting the army andnavy, and the problem of unemployment in general. 

It is a surprising thing that the support of home industries, which wasone of the foibles of Dean Swift, who advised Irishmen to burneverything that came from England except its coal, has only of veryrecent years been resuscitated. So much is this the case that the actionof the South Dublin Board of Guardians, who in 1881 insisted that theworkhouse inmates should be clothed in Irish produce, was conspicuous byits exceptional nature. At this day all are agreed, whatever be theirreligious or political opinions, on the advocacy of this form ofexclusive dealing at which economists may scowl as at a deliberateattempt to fly in the face of the regular play of the forces of supplyand demand, but the success which has so far attended the concertedpolicy of insisting upon being supplied with Irish produce, and the factthat it is, after all, the only mode of restoring to their naturalfunctions the economic forces in a country where industrial conditionswere, by artificial means, thrown out of their natural course, is thejustification for its employment. 

If for no other reason, the activity displayed by "religious" in Irelandin the encouragement and development of local industries as a check onemigration should protect them from the attacks which have been madeupon them, as tending to encourage the uneconomic aspect of thesituation in Ireland. To name only a few that come into one's mind, thenuns' co-operative factories, which have revived Irish point lace atYoughal, Kenmare, Gort, Carrick-on-Suir, Carrickmacross, and Galway, areinstances. Father Dooley, in Galway, has started a woollen factory, witha capital of £10, 000, in which nearly two hundred girls are employed, ofwhom many earn £1 10s. A week. Father Quin, at Ballina, has founded aco-operative shoe factory, and at Castlebar Father Lyons has establishedan electric power station. The work of the Sisters of Charity at Foxfordis well known, and stands in need of no praise, and at Kiltimagh, inMayo, they employ a hundred and twenty girls at dress and lace making;while Father Maguire, at Dromore, in Tyrone, has established a lace andcrochet factory on co-operative principles, which has over a hundredemployees; and at Lough Glynn, in Connacht, a carpet and cheese makingindustry has been built up solely through the efforts of a religiousorder of nuns. These are random examples, and I do not claim that theyare typical. They are, on the other hand, not exceptional. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the effect of the English commercialpolicy towards Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Wool, cotton, sailcloth, sugar refining, shipping, glass, the cattle andprovision trade, were all deliberately strangled. And besides the lossof wealth to Ireland which was the consequence, one must take intoaccount the fact that traditions of commercial enterprise perishedthrough desuetude, so that in the industrial revolution at the beginningof the nineteenth century Ireland was too severely crippled to deriveany benefit from the new order, as to which she was still furtherhandicapped by the poverty of her coal fields. 

The land system, which is only now disappearing, served, moreover, notto inculcate habits of thrift, but positively as a discouragement ofeconomic virtues. Until the legal recognition of tenant-right had beensecured, the tenant who made improvements was liable to have his rentraised, and was aware that he had no legal right to compensation forthem on his removal from the holding. Further, the judicial fixing ofrents, which, as the time for rent revision has approached, haspresented to the tenant the temptation not to make the best of his land, and so run the risk of an augmentation of rent, has been a source ofinsidious demoralisation to the occupant of the soil. 

The social upheaval resulting from land purchase will nowhere be moremarked than in this respect in the stability which it will produce inthe financial conditions of the country, and it may be expected to dosomething to remedy the lamentable state of things which so far has butlittle altered from that of twenty years ago, when it was estimated thatfive-sixths of the total capital of the country was invested abroad. Agreat opportunity presents itself at the present moment. It was stated afew years ago that eleven millions of rent were spent out of the island. At this day when, under the Land Purchase Act, an immense amount ofproperty is being realised, the patriotic Irish landlord seeking aninvestment for his money can, by starting industries in Ireland, at oneand the same time do a patriotic work by providing against the stream ofemigration, and can secure a safe and profitable investment for hispurchase-money. There are very nearly eighty million pounds of capitalto be set free under the Act, and it is scarcely too much to expect thata large proportion of it will be invested by the expropriated landlordsin their own country. The possibility of an industrial revival inIreland is well illustrated by the increase in the number ofco-operative societies, in which there are at the present day 100, 000members, while less than twenty years ago there were only fifty. 

The effect of the Dairy, Agricultural, and Poultry Societies is veryimportant, but perhaps of still greater importance are the Raffeisinbanks, which aim at the promotion of farming by means of co-operativecredit. The loans which they make, at an interest of five per cent. Orsix per cent. , are dealing a death-blow at that curse of Irish life--thegombeen man, whose usury used to mount up to thirty per cent. Theextremely rare cases of default in the repayment of these loans foragricultural purposes will not be surprising to those who recall thetribute paid by Mr. Wyndham, in connection with land purchase annuities, to the Irish peasant as a debtor whose reliability is unimpeachable. More than twenty years ago the Baroness Burdett Coutts made a loan of£10, 000 to the fishermen of Baltimore, with a view to the development oftheir industry, and the unfailing punctuality with which payments weremade afforded another instance of the reliability which is acharacteristic of the Irish peasant. This brings one to note in passingthat of all others the fishing industry has probably suffered most fromthe lack of proper means of transit. The 2, 500 miles of coast line offergreat scope, but the catch of fish off the Irish coast is onlyone-eighth of that off Scotland, and one-sixteenth of that off Englandand Wales, and Irish waters are to a very large extent fished by boatsfrom the coasts of Scotland, the Isle of Man, France, and Norway. Oysterfisheries used to abound--the celebrated beds at Arcachon in the Landeswere stocked from Ireland--but they have fallen into disuse, and withtheir disappearance a very remunerative business has been lost. The needfor extensive and scientific forestry one may also note is obvious, fromthe fact that there are seven million acres of former woodland which arenow reduced to a waste. The results of planting a shelter bed of pineson the north and west coasts, as a protection from the Atlantic winds, would be very great, while the industrial effect of systematisedforestry would be immense. Bark for tanning, charcoal, moss, resin, manure from fallen leaves, litter, fuel, and mushrooms are some of thebye-products of this reproductive industry, while by planting willows, which yield a rapid return, along bogs a basket weaving industry mightvery rapidly be developed. The need, however, for planting on anextensive scale and the inevitable delay before any returns forexpenditure accrue, make forestry essentially an object not for privatebut for public enterprise. 

It is not generally known that in 1831 Ireland grew one-fifth of thetobacco consumed in the three kingdoms, but that in that year the firstLiberal Government which was in power for a generation put down aprofitable industry for which the turfy soil of the country wasparticularly well adapted. With the help of a shilling rebate it isbeing shown, on an experimental area, that tobacco can be grownsuccessfully in Ireland. At present the Treasury has refused to allowany extension of the area under cultivation, and it remains to be seenwhether the united demands of Irish members--Unionist as well asNationalist--will secure the removal of the prohibition against itsgrowth, and so possibly lead to a re-establishment of its cultivation ona similar scale to that of three-quarters of a century ago. 

Perhaps the most important and, one may surmise, far-reaching stepwhich has been taken in respect of Irish industries in the last fewyears is to be found in the registration, under the Merchandise MarksAct of 1905, of a national trade-mark, the property in which is vestedin an association, which, on payment of a fee, grants the right to useit to manufacturers of the nature of whose credentials it is satisfied. The value of this is obvious as giving a guarantee of the country oforigin of goods at a time when the increased demand for Irish producehas added to the number of unscrupulous traders who sell as "made inIreland" goods which are not of Irish manufacture. It is said thattwenty years ago most of the tweed which was placed upon the marketwhich had been made in Ireland was sold as Cheviot, and that to-day the_rôles_ are reversed, and it is certain that for many years the greatbulk of Irish butter masqueraded in English provision shops as Danish. The income of the association is devoted to the taking of legal actionagainst traders who fraudulently sell as Irish, foreign includingEnglish made goods. If an instance is needed of the results which theprotection of a national trade-mark gives in the encouragement ofindustry, by the guarantee of origin which it entails, it is to be foundin the success of similar action in the cases of the butter industriesof Sweden and Austria. It is a great tribute to the Trade-MarkAssociation that within two years of its incorporation the CongestedDistricts Board has applied for the use of the trade-mark for theproducts of its lace classes and for its homespuns. 

The task proposed by Henry Grattan to the Irish Parliament may well betaken to heart by the Irish people to-day:--"In the arts that polishlife, the manufactures that adorn it, you will for many years beinferior to some other parts of Europe, but to nurse a growing people, to mature a struggling, though hardy, community, to mould, to multiply, to consolidate, to inspire, and to exalt a young nation, be these yourbarbarous accomplishments. "

CHAPTER IV

THE LAND QUESTION

 "I can imagine no fault attaching to any land system which does not attach to the Irish system. It has all the faults of a peasant proprietary, it has all the faults of feudal landlordism, it has all the faults incident to a system under which the landlords spend no money on their property, and under which a large part of the land is managed by a Court; it has all the faults incident to the fact that it is to the tenant's interest to let his farm run out of cultivation as the term for revising the judicial rent approaches. "

 --A. J. BALFOUR, on the Second Reading of the Land Bill, May 4th, 1903. 

The reason for the importance of the system of land tenure in the socialconditions of Ireland is to be found in the manner in which therestrictions on Irish commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies drove the population to secure a livelihood in the onlydirection left open to them--namely, agriculture. The results of thisare to be seen to-day in the fact that there are 590, 000 holdings in theisland, and that out of a total population of four and a half millionpeople it is well within the mark to say that three and a half millionare dependent, directly or indirectly, on the land for their means ofexistence. 

The system of tenure in Ireland was as different as possible from thatexisting in Great Britain. The gist of the difference lay in this, thatin England and Scotland landlords let farms, while in Ireland they letland. "In Ireland, " wrote an English observer more than a hundred yearsago, "landlords never erect buildings on their property, nor expendanything in repairs. " This feature, which was the result of historicalreasons, was due to the fact that Irish land-owners were the descendantsof settlers intruded on Irish land, who brought with them Englishnotions of tenure, but had not the capital to render economic thenumerous small holdings situated on their estates. Hence it came aboutthat the provision of capital by an English landlord for the equipmentof farms with cottages, outhouses, fencing, and a drainage system, whichresults in a sort of partnership between landlord and tenant, was, to alarge extent, a thing unknown in Ireland, where, as was aptly said, tenants' improvements were landlords' perquisites, and where point waslent to the differences by the fact that the few properties on which theequipment of the holdings was provided by the landlord were known as"English-managed estates, " and the number of these, Lord Cowper told theHouse of Lords in 1887, could be counted on one's fingers. 

Irish landlords have been compared, not to English squires, but to theground landlords of London, bound to the occupiers only in so far asthey received from their tenants a rent-charge liable to increase as thetenant improved the holding, or as competition arose with the growth ofpopulation. 

The reasons for this state of things are to be found in the number andthe small size of the Irish holdings, but more than this in the factthat from the first landlords came there in a business capacity. 

"Les uns comme les autres, " says a French writer, M. Paul-Dubois, "ilsn'ont vu dans la terre Irlandaise qu'une affaire, et non une patrie. Ilssont restés conquérants en pays de conquête. De là cette conséquenceque, conscients d'être des étrangers, des intrus, ils se sont cruslibres et quittes de toute dette envers le pays, de tous les devoirs dela propriété. "[3]

Planted on land which was confiscated, and, as a result, insecurelyheld, to risk the expenditure of money would have been unnatural, themore so since the expenditure which, in the circumstances, fell upon thetenant in the matter of improvements, provided the best possiblesecurity to the landlord by making the tenant all the more anxious toremain on the holding on which he had sunk what little capital hepossessed, and in consequence virtually obliged, at risk of ejection, tosubmit unwillingly to periodical enhancements of rent. 

In addition to the few English-managed estates it was only in Ulsterthat matters were otherwise, owing to the existence of the custom--anembryo copyhold, Lord Devon called it--known as tenant-right. On thevarious confiscations of land, grants of which had been made to the"undertakers, " many of the latter were either public bodies, such as thegreat City Companies, others were landlords who, even if not resident ata distance, had neither the means nor the inclination to spend thenecessary money on their estates. This was provided by the tenant, who, without aid from the landlord, made improvements on his holding by hisown labour; and in Ulster, where the tenants were settlers from Englandand Scotland, there arose an equitable proprietorship vested in theoccupier, by which, on quitting the farm, he was entitled to claim fromthe new tenant a sum of money partly in compensation for the money andlabour he had invested in the holding and partly as a price paid for thegoodwill or possession, which the new tenant would have no other meansof acquiring. The nature of this "Ulster Custom, " which, until 1870, hadno sanction or protection from the law, was clearly defined by theMaster of the Rolls, in the case of M'Elroy _v. _ Brooke, in thefollowing words:--"The essentials of the custom are the right to sell, tohave the incoming tenant, if there be no reasonable objection to him, recognised by the landlord, and to have a sum of money paid for theinterest in the tenancy transferred. " The English system we see then, with its competitive rent fixed by contract, and subject to the laws ofsupply and demand, did not exist; the social and prescriptive ties whichin England bound the owner and the occupier to each other never aroseunder this state of things, and in their absence did not arise one ofthe strongest inducements to a landed gentry to live on their estatesand to concern themselves in the welfare of their tenants, a socialsystem which, by the interchange of kindly offices wherever in Englandthe proprietors live on their property, does much to make thecountryside attractive to the poorer classes and to check migration. 

There is no more erroneous idea than to suppose, as do some people, thatthere was a large body of resident landed proprietors in Ireland untilthe land war drove them to seek safety across the Channel. As a matterof fact, long before this had begun there existed an absenteearistocracy dependent on middlemen or agents--"the vermin of thecountry, " Arthur Young called them--who constituted a mere mechanicalmedium for the collection of rent, and as such were the worst exponentsof the amenities which, in happier circumstances, are supposed tosubsist between owners and occupiers of agrarian land. At the beginningof the nineteenth century the increase of population in the island andthe high prices resulting from the war led to a very great sub-divisionof holdings, while the exercise of the franchise by the forty shillingsfreeholder until the year 1829 provided an additional inducement to thelandlord to multiply the number of tenants on his land, since by doingso he increased the number of votes under his control, and, _paripassu_, his political influence. 

After the famine, when it was found that one-third of the Irishlandlords were bankrupt, the Encumbered Estates Court Act was passed tocope with the situation which had arisen of a country full of numerouslandlords saddled with land which, owing to mortgages, debts, andincumbrances, was inalienable. Under the Act the Court was empowered, onthe petition of any person sufficiently interested, to sell theencumbered estate and give an indefeasible title, so that persons whobefore had a claim on the estate should now have a claim only on thepurchase-money. It was a piece of strong legislation in its disregard ofvested rights and in the manner in which it set aside express contractsunder which creditors had a claim on the land which could only bedisturbed by paying off that claim. 

In the event the rush of creditors to this Court--created to affordrelief from the delays of Chancery in effecting alienation--was so greatthat, as a result of the consequent fall in prices, land became a drugin the market, and properties in many instances did not realise enoughto meet the mortgages. To the landlords ruined in this manner succeededa new class, who bought up bankrupt estates, often with borrowed money, as a commercial speculation, and caring nothing for the tenant or hiswelfare, looking only on the business side of the transaction, raisedrents arbitrarily to such a pitch that the tenantry were unable to meettheir liabilities. Wholesale evictions ensued, and in this wise arosethe condition of things in which the _Times_--never an unfriendly criticof the landed interest--was constrained to admit in 1852 that "the nameof an Irish landlord stinks in the nostrils of Christendom. "

By an Act of 1858 the Encumbered Estates Court was replaced by theLanded Estates Court, which had power to carry out the sale of, and givean indefeasible title to, any interests in land, whether hypothecated ornot, and after the passing of the Judicature Act of 1877 the name of theCourt became the Land Judges' Court. 

The disfranchising clauses of the Emancipation Act, and the consequentdisappearance of the advantages accruing to the landlords from amultiplication of holdings on their estates, the miserable povertyresulting from the famine, the anxiety of the proprietors to escape theburdens of the remodeled Poor Law, and the demand by the new class ofland speculators for large grazing or tillage farms, to form which theconsolidation of existing holdings was demanded, were the factors whichresulted in the clearances of 1849 and the subsequent years. "Notices toquit, " in a historic phrase, "fell like snowflakes, " at a time when itwas truly said that an eviction was equal to a sentence of death. In afew months whole counties, such as those of Meath and Tipperary, wereconverted into prairies; cabins were thrown down, fences removed, andpeasants swept off, and in ten years nearly 300, 000 families wereevicted from their homes, and a million and a half of the populationfled across the Atlantic. "I do not think, " said Sir Robert Peel--andhis verdict has been endorsed by the judgment of history--"I do notthink that any country, civilised or uncivilised, can offer similarscenes of horror. "

The Devon Commission, the Report of which was issued in 1845, recommended that in future compensation should be given to Irish tenantsfor permanent improvements effected by them. Bills to carry out therecommendation of the Commission were introduced in 1845 by LordStanley, in 1846 by Lord Lincoln, and in 1852 by Mr. Napier, theAttorney-General for Ireland. But it was not until the Act of 1870 waspassed--a quarter of a century after the Report of the Commissioners hadbeen issued--that its recommendations were embodied in an Act ofParliament. So far was this from being the case with the next statutedealing with Irish land--Deasy's Act, passed in 1860--that it aimed atthe substitution of the commercial principles of contract for theequitable principles of custom in the relations between landlord andtenant, in this respect that it refused to allow compensation to thetenant for improvements other than those made with the landlord'sconsent. The object of this Act--the last word of the Manchester Schoolon the Irish Land Question--was, therefore, to destroy any claim by atenant in respect of future improvements, unless under the terms ofsome contract, express or implied. In point of fact, the Act provedalmost a dead letter, and the one result which ensued from its passinginto law was to make the position of the tenant less secure, in so faras it made the process of ejectment less costly and more simple, andenabled the landlord in many instances to confiscate improvements. 

Twenty-three Bills in favour of the tenants were thrown out in the fortyyears which followed Emancipation. The struggle between landlord andtenant was occupied with the attempts of the latter to enforce thecustom of tenant-right in Ulster, and secure its application in theother provinces. The Land Act of 1870, for the first time, gave legalsanction to this principle by giving the tenant a claim to compensationfor disturbance. It gave its imprimatur to the doctrine that an Irishtenant does not contract for the occupation of a farm, that Irish landis not the subject of an undivided ownership, but of a simplepartnership. The pecuniary damages to which a landlord was liable underits provisions was a blow aimed at wanton evictions, and with thecurtailment of the power arbitrarily to effect these, the threats bywhich landlords had been able unjustly to raise rents were robbed ofmuch of their force. 

The tenant under the Act secured a recognition of his property in theland and of his right to occupy it, provided he complied with certainconditions, and, in addition, he obtained compensation, albeitinadequate, for disturbance for non-payment of rent, in cases in whichthe Court considered the rent exorbitant, and in which failure to paywas due to bad seasons. Thus tenant-right, which Lord Palmerston haddismissed with epigrammatic flippancy as landlord wrong only a few yearsbefore, received the sanction of law from his own party. 

In actual practice under the Act the landlords recouped themselves forthe compensation which they had to pay to an evicted tenant by raisingthe rent on his successor in the tenancy in the comparatively few casesin which the evicted tenant could afford the legal costs which thefiling of a claim for compensation entailed, but this much at least hadbeen secured, that the virtual confiscation of the tenants' improvementshad been stopped. The Act of 1870 had been passed to prevent arbitraryevictions and to secure to the tenant compensation for improvements, andin certain cases for disturbance. It succeeded only in making arbitraryevictions more costly for the landlord, it gave the tenant no fixity oftenure since the compensation for disturbance was inadequate. To remedythis Isaac Butt in 1876 introduced a Bill based on the "three F. S"--fairrent, free sale, and fixity of tenure--but it was rejected by 290 votesto 56, and several other amending Bills were thrown out by the House ofCommons between 1876 and 1879. In 1880 the Government were at laststirred to action in the introduction of the Compensation forDisturbance Bill, which caused the retirement of Lord Lansdowne from theCabinet, and was followed by threats of resignation on the part of theDuke of Argyll. Under the Act of 1870 only those occupiers were entitledto claim compensation for disturbance whose rents were not in arrear. Bythis Bill it was proposed to extend the right to that claim to all thosewho were unable to pay as a result of bad harvests, and who were willingto hold their farms on just and reasonable terms, which the landlordrefused. 

After passing through the House of Commons, in spite of Lord RandolphChurchill's denunciation of it as the first step in a social war, theBill, although there had been a large majority in its favour in thelower House, was thrown out by the House of Lords at a time when theneed for remedial legislation was illustrated by the presence in Irelandof 30, 000 soldiers and 12, 000 policemen for the protection of life andproperty. 

The Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Bessborough, whichwas then appointed, reported in the following year that the Land Act of1870 afforded no protection to the tenant who remained in his holding, since compensation for improvements could only be claimed on giving up atenancy. The Commissioners, by a majority of four to one, declaredthemselves in favour of the "three F. S, " which the leader of theOpposition denounced as "Force, Fraud, and Folly, " and the Commissionersjustified their attitude by this statement, which was echoed by theRichmond Commission, which reported soon after, --"freedom of contract, in the case of the majority of Irish tenants, large and small, does notreally exist, " the reason being that tenants in occupation were ready topay any rent rather than sacrifice the capital and labour they had sunkin their holdings. The good seasons after 1870 had made this rise inrent possible, but with the bad winter of 1880 the results becamedisastrous. 

In this manner the "three F. S, " which the Land League demanded, andwhich were secured by the Act of 1881, were conceded against the will ofthe Government by sheer force of circumstances. A rumour which gainedcurrency early in 1880, that the Bessborough Commission would report intheir favour, was stigmatised by Mr. Gladstone as incredible, and theadoption of the principle enunciated by the Commissioners resulted inthe resignation from the Cabinet of the Duke of Argyll. The demandswhich had been made in 1850 by the Tenant League, the first concertedaction of North and South since the Union, were repeated. They includeda fair valuation of rent, the right of a tenant to sell his interest atthe highest market value, and security from eviction so long as he paidhis rent. Their claims were scouted in 1870, and it was not till elevenyears had passed that in 1881 these "three F. S"--fair rent, free sale, and fixity of tenure, the notion of which had so recently beenrepudiated by Mr. Gladstone--were secured by the Land Act of that year, which recognised to the full the dual ownership of Irish land byoccupier and landlord. Under this Act also was created a Court to fixfair rents for judicial periods of fifteen years. 

Mr. Gladstone himself had admitted that the Land Act of 1870, which aConservative member, destined to be a future Chief Secretary--Mr. JamesLowther--described as "pure Communism, " together with the Church Act of1869, was the outcome of the Fenian agitation of the sixties, which drewthe attention of English statesmen to the Irish question. In the sameway the passing of the Act of 1881, which made a far more active assaultupon their prerogatives, secured from a house of landlords through fearthat which they denied on grounds of equity. "In view of the prevailingagitation in Ireland, " said Lord Salisbury of this measure whichassailed every Tory principle as to the sacredness of property, "Icannot recommend my followers to vote against the second reading of theBill. " What Fenianism had effected in 1870 the Land League secured in1881. "I must record my firm opinion, " said Mr. Gladstone ten yearslater, "that the Land Act of 1881 would not have become the law of theland if it had not been for the agitation with which Irish society wasconvulsed. "

The Bill was denounced by the Tories as one of the most unquestionableand, indeed, extreme violations of the rights of property in the wholehistory of English legislation. [4] Lord Salisbury declared that it wouldnot bring peace, and that henceforth the Irish landowner would look uponParliament and the Imperial Government as their worst enemies. The Earlof Lytton declared that it was revolutionary, dangerous, and unjust;that it would organise pauperism and paralyse capital; yet for all thathe warned their lordships that its rejection might be the signal for aninsurrection, of which the whole responsibility would be thrown on theHouse of Lords. But perhaps Lord Elcho expressed the feeling whichpredominated in the Gilded Chamber when he expressed the opinion thatthe Bill was the product of "Brummagem girondists. " In the event, as wehave seen, Lord Lytton's warning bore fruit, and the Bill was passed. "There is scarcely a less dignified entity, " as Disraeli had said inConingsby thirty years before, "than a patrician in a panic. "

Under the Act, let me repeat, for the first time was frankly recognisedthe legal partnership between the tenant who provided the working gearand the landlord who provided the bare soil. The latter could only evictthe tenant on default, the tenant was at liberty to sell his occupancyinterest at will without the leave of the landlord, and the rent payableby the tenant to the landlord was to be fixed by a judicialtribunal--the Land Commission--the establishment of which was but thecarrying out of a suggestion made three years before by Parnell. Theresults of the agitation which had brought about the passing of the Actwere seen when the Court decreed an average reduction of Irish rents by20 per cent. , knocking off no less than £1, 500, 000 at one stroke fromthe rack-rentals of the country. 

The Act was not applicable to tenants whose rent was in arrear--those, that is to say, who were in the poorest circumstances--and a Billintroduced by Parnell in 1882 to wipe out these arrears by a grant ofpublic money, was thrown out, being denounced by Lord Salisbury as adangerous precedent of public plunder to mislead future generations. 

As ballast to lighten the Act of 1881 the leaseholders were thrownoverboard. For this exclusion from the benefits of the Act there was, onprinciple, no excuse. A Bill of Parnell's to remedy it was thrown out in1883 by a majority of four to one, and the 35, 000 tenants who sufferedfrom it were not entirely accorded the privileges of the other tenantsuntil the passing of the Rent Redemption Act of 1890. The averagereduction in rent effected for this class of tenant has amounted to 35per cent. 

One further fact in connection with the Act of 1881 deserves mention asshowing that though Parliament may propose a remedy for an admittedgrievance, the Courts of law are able to dispose its application bytheir interpretation in direct contravention of the intentions of thelegislature. 

Section 8, sub-section 9, of the Act of 1881 provided:--"No rent shallbe allowed or made payable in any proceedings under this Act in respectof improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, and forwhich, in the opinion of the Court, the tenant or his predecessors intitle shall not have been paid or otherwise compensated by the landlordor his predecessors in title. " In the case of Adams _v_. Dunseath, inFebruary, 1882, it was held by the Court of Appeal, in the teeth of theobvious intention of Parliament, that the fact that a tenant had for alonger or shorter period of time enjoyed the benefit of his improvementsmight be taken into consideration by the judge as being an equivalentfor compensation and as serving to limit the reductions in rent effectedby the Commission on land which had been subjected to theseimprovements. By this interpretation many thousands of pounds were putinto the landlords' pockets during the years which intervened before1896, when it was superseded by a provision in the Act of that yearwhich re-affirmed and established the principle, the enactment of whichhad been intended in 1881. 

We must now turn to the introduction of land purchase. In 1847 Lord JohnRussell, in a project which was subsequently dropped, advocated, as didJ. S. Mill in later years, the solution of the land question by theestablishment of a peasant proprietary. The nidus, however, out of whichthis policy germinated was the right of pre-emption which John Brightsecured for the tenants of ecclesiastical land under the Church Act of1869. A further step in the same direction was taken in the Land Act of1870--not more than two-thirds of the purchase-money being advanced tothe tenant under its provisions. Under the Church Act 6, 000, and underthe Act of 1870 1, 000, tenants purchased their farms. 

In 1878 Parnell urged the establishment of peasant proprietorship, andunder the Act of 1881 three-quarters of the purchase-money was to beadvanced on such terms as to be repayable by instalments of five percent, per annum for thirty-five years, but only 1, 000 tenants tookadvantage of the facilities thereby offered. 

Four years later was passed the Ashbourne Act, so called from the IrishLord Chancellor responsible for its introduction, and in it we have thefirst Act--purely for land purchase--which has been applied to Ireland. By it the Treasury found the whole of the purchase-money up to a totalof five millions sterling out of the Irish Church Surplus Fund, andforty-nine years were allowed for repayment of the purchase-money to theState at 4 per cent. , of which £2 15s. Was interest on the advance and£1 5s. Went to a sinking fund for the liquidation of the loan. 

Only 2, 000 tenants took advantage of the terms of this Act, but it isnevertheless of importance as marking the point at which the principleof peasant proprietorship was recognised as the solution by both Englishparties. In this way was realised, not much more than twenty years ago, the importance of that change of ownership which, in Arthur Young'swell-known phrase, turns sand into gold, and which has progressed eversince. A shrewd French observer--Gustave de Beaumont--saw in 1837 thatthis was the way out of the _impasse_ of the Irish land system, and halfa century ago a great opportunity presented itself at the time of theEncumbered Estates Act of establishing a peasant proprietary, when morethan two million acres--one-sixth of the whole soil of Ireland--weresold in ten years, and were bought in lots of 200 to 250 acres by some8, 000 to 10, 000 land-jobbers. 

The Land Bill which Mr. Gladstone introduced as a pendant to the HomeRule Bill of 1886 offered to every Irish landlord the option of sellinghis estate to his tenants, who would thereby become occupying owners atonce, paying an interest of 4 per cent. For forty-nine years on theprice, which would be twenty years' purchase of the judicial rents, paidby the State issue of fifty million pounds of Consols with the revenuesof Ireland as security. After the Unionist victory of 1886 Mr. Parnellbrought in a Bill which also was destined never to receive the RoyalAssent, but which again is of importance in view of subsequentlegislation. 

He based his demand upon the fall in prices which prevented tenants frompaying judicial rents. By this Bill it was proposed that the Land Courtshould have power to abate rents fixed prior to 1885 if it were provedthat the tenants could not pay the whole amount, and would pay one halfand arrears, and further, if these amounts were paid evictions andproceedings for the recovery of rent should be suspended, and, lastly, the Bill aimed at the inclusion of leaseholders under the Act of 1881. 

It was roundly denounced by the landlords. [5] Lord Hartington declaredthat were it to pass it would have the effect of stopping the payment ofrent all over Ireland, and Sir Michael Hicks Beach spoke of it as "onewhich, though purporting to be a mere instalment of justice to the poorIrish tenant, is an act of gross injustice and confiscation to thelandlords of Ireland. " The Bill was thrown out by a majority ofninety-five, and the Plan of Campaign on the part of tenants against thepayment of impossible rents was the result. 

A Royal Commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Cowper, was appointedto inquire into the administration of the Land Laws. The Commissionreported in January, 1887, and bore out the grounds on which Parnellhad based his Bill of the previous year. It felt "constrained torecommend an earlier revision of judicial rents on account of thestraitened circumstances of Irish farmers. " It recommended that the termof judicial rents should be lowered from fifteen years to five, thatthose rents already fixed should be revised, and that leaseholdersshould be brought under the Act of 1881. In reference to the Bill of theyear before Lord Salisbury had said that the revision of judicial rentswould not be honest and would be exceedingly inexpedient. [6] The Bill, which is known as Lord Cadogan's, which was introduced on the last dayof March, 1887, and which purported to carry out the recommendations ofthe Cowper Commission, opened the Land Court to leaseholders, settingaside in this way the more solemn forms of agrarian contract. As regardsauthorising the reduction of judicial rents on the ground of the fall inprices, it did nothing, and the Prime Minister repeated his opinion that"to do so would be to lay your axe at the root of the fabric ofcivilised society. "[7]

Mr. Balfour, who, in the month of March, had become Chief Secretary, proclaimed with equal force that it would be folly and madness to breakthese solemn contracts. [8] In the Bill, as at first brought in, theCourt had, in fact, power to vary contracts by fixing a composition foroutstanding debts and determining the period over which payment shouldextend. In May the Government accepted the principle that the Courtshould not only do this (settle the sum due by an applicant for relieffor outstanding debt), but also should fix a reasonable rent for therest of the term. The Ulster tenants insisted on this, but, at thebidding of the landlords, it was subsequently withdrawn, and, finally, in July the Premier summoned his party and, telling them that if theBill were not altered Ulster would be lost to the Unionist cause, passedinto law a Bill sanctioning a general revision of judicial rents forthree years, and in this way did the Tories lower rents in breach of aclause in the Act of 1881 that guaranteed rents fixed under itsprovisions for a term of fifteen years. 

As a speaker of the day put it--"You have the Prime Minister rejectingin April the policy which in May he accepts, rejecting in June thepolicy which he had accepted in May, and then in July accepting thepolicy which he had rejected in June, and which had been within a fewweeks declared by himself and his colleagues to be inexpedient anddishonest, to be madness and folly, and to be laying an axe to the veryroot of the fabric of civilised society. "

When the advance of five millions for land purchase under the Act of1885 was nearly exhausted, a further sum of equal amount was earmarkedfor the same purpose in 1888. Lord Randolph Churchill in 1889 expressedthe opinion that something like £100, 000, 000 of credit should be pledgedto effect purchase. In 1891 Mr. Balfour authorised the devotion of afurther sum of £33, 000, 000 for this purpose. The whole of thepurchase-money was to be advanced by the State by the issue ofguaranteed land stock, limited to the amount stated, and giving adividend at two and three-quarters per cent. , repayment being effectedin forty-nine years by the purchaser by the payment of an annuity on hisholding of four per cent. The Act was too complicated to work well, butunder its provisions 30, 000 sales occurred, in comparison with 25, 000which had been effected under the Acts of 1885 and 1888. The passing ofthis Act marks the close of the experimental stage in land purchase. Under the Land Act of 1896 was asserted the principle of compulsory salein the case of estates in the Landed Estates Court, whose duty it was tosell bankrupt property, if they came under certain specified conditions, and if a receiver had been appointed to them. 

This roused the fury of the landlords to the highest pitch. "You wouldsuppose, " said Sir Edward Carson, "the Government were revolutionistsverging on socialism.... I ask myself whether they are mad or I am mad?I am quite sure one of us must be mad. " In spite of denunciations ofthis order the clause respecting compulsory sale of the estatesmentioned was passed, occupying tenants having in those cases the rightof pre-emption. Under its provisions the period for the repayment of themoney advanced was extended to sixty-eight years. The annuity payable bythe tenant during the first decade was to be calculated and made payableupon the total purchase-money advanced, but at the end of each of thefirst three decennial periods, as the debt was reduced by theaccumulation of sinking fund, the annuity was to be re-calculated andmade payable on the portions of the advance remaining unpaid. Under theAct every purchaser was to start with a reduction of not less than 25per cent. On the rent which he had hitherto paid, and this amount was tobe still further reduced by not less than 10 per cent. At the end ofeach of the first three periods of ten years. This Act effected the saleof 37, 000 holdings. The applications for sale under it numbered 8, 000 in1898, and in the succeeding years the number steadily diminished, sothat they amounted in 1899 to 6, 000, in 1900 to 5, 000, and in 1901 toonly 3, 000. The reasons for this are not difficult to find. The paymentin Consols was profitable so long as securities stood at a high figure, but the expenses arising from the South African war resulted in a fallof Stocks from 112 to 85, and as a result new terms for land purchasebecame imperatively needed. In consequence Mr. Wyndham brought in a Billin 1902, which was, however, stillborn, but its withdrawal wasaccompanied with a promise of legislation in the following session. Thesituation in the winter of 1902 was critical. An Irish Land Trust hadbeen formed by the landlords to oppose the United Irish League, and onthe 1st of September there was issued a Viceregal proclamation, puttingthe Coercion Act in force in Dublin and Limerick. By a curiouscoincidence, the papers published the same day a letter from CaptainShaw Taylor, an Irish landlord, inviting representatives of tenants andlandlords to meet in conference in Dublin and discuss a way out of theagrarian _impasse_. The proposal was scouted by the _Times_, the _DailyExpress_, and the Dublin _Daily Express_, but was favourably received bythe Press in other quarters. A motion by Lord Mayo at the Landowners'Convention, in favour of the conference, was rejected by 77 votes to 14. A poll on the question being demanded, 4, 000 landlords, each with anestate of more than 500 acres, received voting papers, and of these1, 706 replied, 1, 128 in favour and 578 against a conference, while thesmall landlords were almost unanimously in its favour. A second appealwas then made to the Landowners' Convention through its president, LordAbercorn, but an answer in the negative was received, for it went on tosay--"It would be merely to give long-discredited politicians acertificate of good sense and of just views, we might almost say oflegislative capacity to sit in an Irish Parliament in Dublin, were we toaccept Captain Shaw Taylor's invitation to join them. "

The criticism of an unbiassed foreign observer on this attitude of rigidcast-iron _non possumus_ is instructive. "Rappelons nous, " writes M. Bechaux, "que le parti irlandais au Parlement, si grossièrement insultérepresente 4/5 du peuple irlandais, nous avons un specimen de l'espritréactionnaire et irréconciliable du landlordisme irlandais. " In spite ofthis the Conference met at the end of the year. The landlords'representatives were:--Lord Dunraven, Lord Mayo, Col. Hutcheson Pöe, andCol. Nugent Everard; and those of the tenants were:--Mr. John Redmond, Mr. W. O'Brien, Mr. T. W. Russell, and Mr. T. C. Harrington. On the 3rdJanuary, 1903, a joint report to serve as the basis of the new Bill wasissued. 

The Report was in favour of purchase as the only possible policy to becarried out on such terms that the yearly payments of the tenantsshould be 15 to 25 per cent. Lower than second term rents, while the sumreceived by the landlords was to be such as at 3 or 3-1/4 per cent. Interest would yield them the same income as second term rents, less 10per cent. Deduction, as an equivalent for the cost of collection underthe old system. The difference between these two sums was to be bridgedby a bonus from the Treasury to the landlords in the interests ofagrarian peace. The Report was further in favour of enlarging smallholdings by dividing up grazing lands, and under it evicted tenants who, as such, were not entitled to have judicial rents fixed were to be giventhe option to purchase. 

Second term rents are those fixed for the second judicial period offifteen years under the Act of 1881, and they were on an average 37 percent. Less than those before the passing of that Act. 

Under the Act which Mr. Wyndham introduced on March 25th, 1903, theTreasury may advance a sum up to one hundred millions at 2-3/4 per cent. Interest, with another 1/2 per cent. Sinking fund. The advances to thetenants, which are limited to £5, 000 or, in exceptional circumstances, £7, 000, are made in cash by the Land Commissioners, of whom three, serving as the Estates Commissioners, are expressly responsible for theworking of the Act. A Treasury loan at 2-3/4 per cent. Provides thenecessary funds. Under the Act the issue of this Stock was limited tofive million pounds a year for the first three years, but in January, 1905, this was changed to a sum of six million. By adding to the 2-3/4per cent. Interest which the tenants pay on the loan the further sum of1/2 per cent. Which they contribute to sinking fund for repayment, wearrive at 3-1/4 per cent. Which they have to pay for sixty-eight and ahalf years to obtain the fee-simple of their land. The security whichMr. Wyndham produced for the repayment of interest was the credit of theIrish peasantry, of whom, out of more than seventy thousand purchasersowing an eighth of a million to the State under previous Purchase Acts, only two had incurred bad debts, which, as being irrecoverable, hadfallen on the taxpayer. As a further safeguard the payment is secured bythe annual grants-in-aid paid by the Treasury to the County Councils, which can be withheld on default to pay interest on purchase advances. In order to facilitate sales the system of "zones, " which has been somuch canvassed, was devised. Under it the Estates Commissioners arebound to make advances of purchase-money in all cases in which the totalannuity paid by the tenant ranges from 10 to 40 per cent. Less than therent which he has hitherto paid. If it be a first term rent thereduction must be at least 20 and not more than 40 per cent. Less, andif it be a second term rent there must be a reduction of not less than10 and not more than 30 per cent. It will be, perhaps, clearer if put inthis way. If a first term rent amounts to £100, then thetenant-purchaser has to pay at least £60, and at most £80, as annuity, while if the £100 represent second term rent the yearly payment variesfrom a minimum of £70 to a maximum of £90. 

If purchases are proposed outside the zones, in which, that is to say, the annuity proposed is under 10 or over 40 per cent. Of the judicialrent, the estate must, before sales are effected, be surveyed by theEstates Commissioners in order that they may see whether the security issound, and whether the equitable rights of all parties concerned seem tobe safeguarded, and without this sanction advances will not be made inthe case of sales in these circumstances. The amount received by thelandlord, of course, does not, if invested in Trust Securities at 3-1/4per cent. , provide the same income as did his rent roll, even when onetakes into account the 10 per cent. For collection to which we havereferred. On the other hand, he is secured from the possibility offurther reductions in rent in the future, and there is a likelihood thatthe securities in which he invests may rise, but, in addition to this, a sum of twelve millions of bonus is to be devoted to bridge the gapbetween his former rent from the tenant and his present income from hisinvestments. 

Under this provision every landlord gets 12 per cent. Bonus on his sale, and this sum is part of his life estate, and need not, therefore, beinvested in trust securities, but may be invested in stock yielding ahigher rate of interest. This point was not clear in the Act of 1903, but was explicitly enacted in an amending Act of 1904. 

In order further to accelerate sale an investigation of title deeds, documents which a great English lawyer--Lord Westbury--once described as"difficult to decipher, disgusting to touch, and impossible tounderstand, " is not necessary prior to sale; for an enjoyment for sixyears of the rents of an estate brings with it the right to sell, andproof of title is needed only after purchase has been completed in orderthat the vendor may establish his right of disposal of the proceeds, andas further inducement he gets a sum not exceeding one full year'sarrears of rent, or at most 5 per cent. Of the purchase price. 

The good results which have accrued where a peasant proprietary hasarisen are admitted on all sides. Mr. Long himself, in words which forman illuminating commentary on landlordism, confessed that the blessingsand advantages of a change of ownership are obvious. Everyone is agreedthat the happiness, bred of security on the part of the occupying owner, brings in its train sobriety and industry. The business of the gombeenman is going, and one may well hope to see arise before long that thriftand energy characteristic of the peasant proprietor, whether in France, Belgium, or Lombardy. 

It must not be forgotten, however, that land purchase to bring peacemust be universal. In 1901 the De Freyne tenants rebelled against thepayment to their landlord of a rent which was 25 to 30 per cent. Higherthan the purchase annuities paid by the neighbouring tenants on theDillon estate, which had been bought up by the Congested DistrictsBoard. Under the Wyndham Act there are in progress reductions of annualcharges, ranging from 10 to 40 per cent. , on holdings adjacent to thosewhere either the landlord is recalcitrant and refuses to sell or wherethe slowness of administration has delayed progress and secured no sale, and, as a result, dissatisfaction reigns among the less fortunatetenants. 

According to the last report of the Estates Commissioners nearly 90, 000holdings had been sold in the period of the application of the Act, fromNovember 1st, 1903, to March 31st, 1906. The total price of all thesales agreed upon was nearly forty millions, but the amount advanced bythe Commission was less than ten millions. There is little doubt thatthe number of agreements for sale would have been half as many again butfor the lack of money and administrative powers. One of the EstatesCommissioners, in his evidence before the Arterial Drainage Commission, stated that under the Land Purchase Acts passed before that of 1903 intwenty-five years 75, 000 tenants had purchased at a price of twenty-fivemillions, and if to these are added the ninety thousand purchasers underthe Act of Mr. Wyndham the result is seen that nearly a third of thetenants have in the last quarter of a century become occupying owners. 

The immense acceleration in the rate of sale which these figuresindicate, leads one to ask how far the sales under the Wyndham Act havebeen as advantageous to the tenants as those concluded under formerstatutes. In the first place, it must be noted that more thanfour-fifths of the direct sales which have occurred have taken placeunder the zones. When the price proposed is above the zones the reasonwhy inspection is demanded is obviously that the solvency of thepurchaser, with which the State, as creditor, is concerned, is inquestion. The minimum limit of the zones was said to be necessary toprotect those with rights superior to those of the landlord, but, as wasobserved, the value of land does not depend on the mortgages with whichit is charged. In view of the modern methods by which, on purchase, there is a Treasury guarantee, inspection before sale tends to reducethe price, and the absence of inspection under the zones has tended toenhance prices. It must be further noticed that the minimum price fixedby the zones is higher than the mean price of sales effected underPurchase Acts from 1885 to 1903, and by this method in the case of everysale brought about without the delay of inspection, the provisions ofthe Act have secured an artificial inflation of price for the benefit ofthe landlord, amounting to a minimum of one year's rent. The reductionof the annuity payable by the tenants from 4 per cent. To 3-1/4 percent, of the capital has served to obscure the amount of purchase pricepaid by tenants who are apt to fail to appreciate the fact that theannuity is payable over a more extended period of years, and theprovisions as to the sale and re-purchase of demesnes have at the sametime secured for the landlords themselves facilities for obtainingadvances of ready money on reasonable terms. These are the factors inthe Wyndham Act which have made M. Paul-Dubois declare of itthat--"Emaneé d'un gouvernment, ami des landlords, elle cache mal, sousun apparence d'impartialité d'adroits efforts pour faire aux landlordsde la part belle pour hausser en leur faveur le prix de la terre. "

The average price per acre for the five years before 1903 was £8 9s. ;since the Act it has been £13 4s. , or taking into account the bonus £15. The prices before the Wyndham Act rarely exceeded eighteen years'purchase, and were, moreover, paid in Land Stock and without a bonus. Under this Act the reasons which I have tried to outline have brought itto pass that twenty-five years of second term rents are being paid incash, which, with the bonus, makes the total purchase price amount totwenty-eight years. Hence it is that there is widespread anxiety inIreland lest land is being sold under the zones at prices which the LandCommission, had it been entitled to inspect, would have been unable tosanction as offering a safe security, seeing that the purchaser must payhis annuity for sixty-eight years without hope of reduction--a danger, in the event of bad seasons, which might have been diminished if thesinking fund had been fixed at a higher rate and the decadal reductionsof earlier Acts retained, so as to reduce the incidence of the burden inits later stages. This, be it noted, is one of the points in which theprovisions of the Act differ from the recommendations of the LandConference. 

I have referred already to the block in sales under the Act owing to thescarcity of money which is forthcoming to meet sales already effected. By the financial provisions of the statute, so as not to demoralise themarket, a definite check was put upon the issue of the land stock, andjust before the late Government resigned Mr. Long, as Chief Secretary, made a proposal, which was not received with enthusiasm by the partiesconcerned, that the landlords should in future be paid partly in stockat a nominal value and partly in cash. Nothing has since been done, andthe only step taken so far has been the appointment of a judge inaddition to those formerly so engaged, to accelerate the judicialinquiries necessitated by the process of transfer. The whole cost of thefinance of the Act falls on the Irish taxpayer, and before theintroduction of Mr. Wyndham's proposal the idea was mooted--only to beabandoned--of reviving a proposal made by Sir Robert Giffen in the_Economist_ twenty years ago, which would have made the annuities paidon purchase the basis of the funds from which the local bodies inIreland would draw their revenue, while the Imperial Exchequer would berelieved to an equivalent amount by deductions from its grants to localservices. 

The cost of the flotation of the Land Stock is borne by the IrishDevelopment Fund of £185, 000 per annum, which is the share of Ireland, equivalent to the grant for the increased cost of education in Englandunder the Act of 1902. More than one-half of this fund has already beenhypothecated for the costs of flotation of the twenty millions of LandStock which have already been issued, and under the present system offinance, after a further issue of another twenty millions of stock, thewhole loss will be thrown on the County Councils, and through them onthe ratepayers, who have already been called upon to pay £70, 000 to meetcertain of the losses in this connection, which amount to twelve percent. Of the value of the stock floated. 

The breaking up of the grazing lands, which in many instances thelandlords are keeping back from the market, has not met with muchsuccess under the Act, and it is difficult to see how compulsion is tobe avoided if the country is to be saved from the economicallydisastrous position of having established in it a number of occupyingowners on tenancies which are not large enough to secure to them aliving wage. 

Under the Land Act of 1891 was created the Congested Districts Board, with an annual income of £55, 000, for the purpose of promoting thepermanent improvement of the backward districts of the West. Thedistricts which come under its control are those which answer thefollowing test, that more than twenty per cent. Of the population of acounty live in electoral divisions, of which the total rateable valuegives a sum of less than 30s. Per head of population. Such electoraldivisions occur in the nine counties of Kerry, Cork, Galway, Mayo, Clare, Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo, Donegal. In these counties there are1, 264 electoral divisions, of which 429 are congested. The setting up ofparticular districts as "congested" is, of course, quite arbitrary. There may be places outside the congested areas the condition of whichis much worse than that of some of the congested districts, but if thepopulation of these districts does not form one-fifth of that of thewhole county they are ruled out of the scope of the Board's activities. 

The conditions which subsist in them have been ably described by M. Bechaux from personal observation, and he declares that the standard ofliving is lower than in any other country of Western Europe. Theirinhabitants number more than half a million--that is to say, 10 percent. Of the total population of the island. Most of them have farms oftwo to four acres, and they pay from a few shillings to several poundsfor rent. In many instances the rent which they pay is rather for a roofthan for the soil. They eke out a precarious livelihood by migration toEngland, for there is but little demand for agricultural labour owing tothe prevalence of pasture in the West. Fishing has served as a secondarysource of income, and kelp burning was a profitable addition to theirmeans until the discovery of iodine in Peru sent down the price to amarked extent. 

The right of turbary, which nearly every tenancy possesses, is the onething which has kept this population from starvation, and in the case ofseaside tenancies a further gain accrues from the use made of seaweed asmanure, which, owing to the absence of stall-feeding, is only to beobtained in this way. Home industries, such as weaving, form anothersource of profit, and last, but not least, must be reckoned the moneysent home by relatives who have emigrated to America. Calves, pigs, andpoultry are maintained in these circumstances, and, owing to the sale ofthe best of the stock, the breed has steadily deteriorated. In thewinter months potatoes, milk, and tea are the main articles of diet, andafter the potato harvest is used up American meal, ground from maize, and American bacon of the worst possible kind take their place. Thebacon of their own pigs is far too expensive for them to eat. The maizeflour serves also as fodder for the live stock, and the oats which aregrown are-eaten as gruel by the people as well as by the animals whichthey rear. The Congested Districts Board was established to remedy, asfar as possible, this state of things--primarily by reorganisingtenancies and amalgamating them into economic holdings, and at the sametime enlarging them by the purchase of untenanted land, followed by itsaddition to existing tenancies. The slowness of its operations is seenfrom the fact that after fourteen years it had purchased less than240, 000 acres, of which three-quarters were untenanted land, while thewhole extent of the congested districts is more than three and a halfmillion acres. In justice to the Board, however, one must add that ithas concerned itself with many other branches of rural economy--notablythe improvement of the breed of horses, cattle, and pigs, the sale atcost price of chemical manures and seed, the making of harbours androads, and the sale on instalment terms of fishing boats. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the work done by the Board on the Dillonestate in Counties Mayo and Roscommon and in Clare Island. But when onereads in the Report for 1906--the fifteenth annual report of theBoard--that since its establishment the Board has enlarged 1, 220tenures, re-arranged 537, and created 220, and realises, further, thatthere are in Ireland 200, 000 uneconomic holdings, one may well ask whatare these among so many?

Under the Act of 1903 the Board's purchases are financed by the LandCommission, and the results are to be seen in an acceleration ofpurchases, for while in the twelve years 1891 to 1903 the Board hadbought about 200, 000 acres, of which less than 45, 000 were unlet land, in the three years from November, 1903, to the end of March, 1905, theacreage bought was over 160, 000 acres, of which 48, 000 were unlet, andnegotiations were in progress for the transfer of another 100, 000 acres, of which 20, 500 were unlet. 

Under the Act, however, in the case of "Congested Estates, " which aredefined as those in which one-half at least of the holdings are ofvaluation of £5 or under, or which consist of mountain or bog, the LandCommission is empowered to purchase and re-sell to the tenants, even ata loss, so long as the total loss on the purchase and improvements ofthese holdings does not exceed 10 per cent. Of the cost of the totalsales effected in the course of the same year. The amendments of theHouse of Lords, however, made the part of the Act dealing with thisquestion a dead letter, and the Land Commissioners have given up theattempt to put it in force. The landlords, having a choice between saledirect to their tenants and to the Land Commission, have refused to givetheir consent to the declaration of their estate as a congested estate, which is necessary for the application of this section, unless theyreceive a guarantee that the holdings shall not be sold to the tenantsat a lower price than they themselves could have obtained. The result isthat if the Commissioners were to pay these maximum prices there wouldbe nothing left for them out of which to make the necessaryimprovements, and, in consequence, this provision of the Act has been afailure. 

As regards the evicted tenants, the first condition in the settlementarrived at by the Land Conference, and embodied in the Wyndham Act, wasthat they--the wounded soldiers in the land war, as they have beencalled--to whose sacrifices in the common cause is due the ameliorativelegislation enacted by Parliament, should be restored to their holdings. In actual practice, by means of restrictive instructions issued by thelate Government to the Commissioners, two of whom protested against thisaction in their report for 1906, the provisions of the Act whichpromised this reinstatement were made a dead letter--the Executive onceagain, in a historic phrase, driving a coach and four through thestatute. 

With the advent to power of the Liberal Government these instructionswere withdrawn, but a further serious obstacle was to be found in therefusal of some landlords--and those, too, the worst--to allow theirestates to be inspected with a view to find holdings for evictedtenants. This was the condition of affairs to which Mr. Bryce--at thattime Chief Secretary--referred, when he said--"If the remedy for thisstate of things is compulsion, then to compulsion for that remedy wemust go. "

It is to be observed that the three Estates Commissioners were unanimousin thinking compulsion necessary, and that which was demanded was thatthe occupants, or planters, who in some cases have been _bona fide_farmers, but whom the Land Commission inspectors reported had in manycases allowed the land to get into a bad and dirty state, should, ondispossession, be generously compensated or given their choice of otherlands. It was originally thought that one thousand would be the limit ofthe number of applications which would be made for reinstatement, but, in the event, out of ten thousand tenants evicted in the last quarter ofa century, such applications were made in 6, 700 cases, and some notionof the poverty of these peasants who were turned out upon the roadsidemay be inferred from the fact that nearly one-half paid a rental of lessthan £10 a year. 

At the beginning of the session of 1907, out of the total number ofapplicants 1, 300 had been rejected as not coming within the scope of theprovisions relating to them, and 650, or less than 10 per cent. Of thewhole number who applied, had been reinstated. In the case of more thanhalf the total number of applicants no report had been made, and in morethan 450 cases, including, of course, those on the Clanricarde and Lewisestates, inspection of the property had been, as it is still, refused bythe landlords. At this juncture Mr. Birrell declared that furtherlegislation was imperatively needed, and to this announcement Mr. WalterLong replied that he accepted the view of his predecessor, Mr. Wyndham, as to the bargain which had been come to in regard to this question, andhe went on to say:--[9]

"There can be no doubt whatever that in the interest not merely of theseunfortunate people, whatever their past history may have been, but inthe interest of the successful working of the Land Purchase Act, theirreinstatement is looked upon as an essential element and a thingpromised by Parliament. "

The voluntary system, to which a tentative agreement was given under theAct of 1903, having broken down, the Evicted Tenants Bill was designedas a tardy act of justice to remove the cause for disaffection on thepart of a tenantry to which Mr. T. W. Russell paid a notable tribute theother day as being not naturally lawless, but in point of fact the mostGod-fearing, purest-minded, and simplest peasantry on the face of theearth. That his diagnosis, that unrest is merely the product ofsuffering under cruel circumstances, is valid, is illustrated by thecomplete restoration of peace on the Massereene estate, when, on thedeath of the late peer, the planters were replaced by the tenants whohad been evicted. 

The land which it was proposed to affect by the Bill was a mere matterof some 80, 000 acres, a bagatelle to the landed interest of Ireland, butinvolving vital consequences to the poverty-stricken peasants of theWest. It was a Bill, as the Lord Chancellor declared, to deal with thetail of an agrarian revolution, and to effect this with the minimum ofsuffering, compulsory powers and a simple and expeditious procedure weredemanded, but in spite of the lip service which Unionists paid to theprinciples involved, in spite of their admissions that it proposed onlyto carry out their part of the agreement, arrived at no less than fouryears ago; by their amendments in the House of Lords, introducinglimitations and appeals involving delays and costs, they succeeded inlarge measure in destroying the value of the measure. One can understandthe attitude of Lord Clanricarde, who roundly denounced the wholeproposal as "tainted with the callous levity of despotism, " but it isdifficult to speak charitably of the members of the Opposition, who, while repeatedly protesting their anxiety to see the evicted tenantsrestored, took care, through the agency of the House of Lords, to placeevery possible obstacle in the way of their speedy re-instatement. 

Many of the amendments designed by the House of Lords were proposed bytwo of the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary, who sit in that House primarilyas judges, and who are supposed to keep free from politicalentanglements. They aimed at an enhancement of the prices at whichcompulsory purchase should take effect, with a view, it was admitted bytheir organs in the Press, to afford a precedent for further schemes ofland purchase at large. Of this nature was the compensation which theydemanded--fortunately without success--in accordance with the provisionsof the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, which, if accepted byGovernment, would have given to the landlords on sale a douceur of 10per cent. In addition to the 12 per cent. Bonus which they already enjoyover and above the market value of the land, and the fixation of such aprice would have prevented any reinstatement, for this reason, that theinstalments of the tenants in those circumstances would have been toohigh to have been within the means of the tenants whom it was proposedto reinstate. 

There was a curious irony in the spectacle of the House of Lordsstanding out for the principle of fixity of tenure, and defending toothand nail the tenant-right of a few hundred planters, when little morethan thirty years ago this same body offered the most relentlessopposition to any recognition of the right of compensation fordisturbance on the part of four millions of Irish tenants. In thismatter the Lords gained their point, and compulsory powers are not to beapplied under the Act to the holdings on which the landlords have placedplanters, who are held to be _bona fide_ farmers. An amendment to thiseffect was thrown out by the House of Commons, by a majority of morethan four to one, on a division in which only 66 voted for theamendment, but although the Bill in its original form offered sittingtenants the fullest compensation ever offered to such persons, andalthough most of the planters would be only too glad to accept suchterms, the Upper House insisted on over-riding the will of the greatmajority in the Commons. 

Lord Lansdowne, on the second reading, gave three reasons why the Billshould not be incontinently rejected by the Peers. In the first place, it came to them, he said, supported by an enormous majority in the otherHouse, "and their Lordships always desired to treat attentively andrespectfully Bills which came to them with such a recommendation. "Secondly, the late Government, as well as the present, had pledgedthemselves to a measure of reinstatement of some kind, and if they threwout the Bill on a second reading "it would be said that they had recededfrom a kind of understanding arrived at in 1903, " and lastly, "thesummary rejection of the Bill might greatly increase the difficulties ofthe Executive Government in Ireland. " One would have thought that thefact that the Bill was given a second reading did little to exoneratethe Upper House from similar consequences as a result of theirmutilation of the Bill in Committee. 

In its final form the Act allows an appeal on questions of value fromthe inspector, to two Estates Commissioners, and from them to Mr. Justice Wylie, sitting as Judicial Commissioner with a valuer. Onquestions of price there is no appeal from him. Other appeals, onquestions of law and fact, are, by Section 6, to be heard by a Judge ofthe King's Bench, with whom rests the final decision whether aparticular planter is or is not to be evicted. Demesne lands and otherlands, purchase of which would interfere with the value of adjoiningproperty, are omitted from the scope of the statute, and its operationis limited to the case of 2, 000 tenants, whose claims must be disposedof within four years. The power vested in the Estates Commissionerscompulsorily to acquire untenanted land, not necessarily their formerholdings, for the reinstatement of the evicted tenants, is of nopractical value in the case of the Clanricarde estate, since all theland on it is occupied, and the fact that on that plague-spot--thenucleus of the whole disturbance--no settlement will be possible underthe Act, shows to what an extent was justified Mr. Birrell's declarationthat the final form of the statute was a triumph for Lord Clanricarde, and affords a curious commentary on the repeated declarations of theUnionist leaders, that nothing was further from their desire than toeffect the wrecking of the Bill. [10]

Rejection of similar measures of relief--notably the Tenants'Compensation Bill of 1880--has led in the past to a recrudescence ofstrife in Ireland, and Mr. Balfour's unworthy retort to Mr. Redmond'sdeduction from every precedent in the history of the struggle for theland, that it was an incitement to lawlessness, was a mere partisanretort to an avowal of a danger which every unbiassed observer must seearises from the betrayal by the House of Lords of a confidence in afinal settlement which was formerly encouraged by a Conservative Governmerit. 

One of the weapons used by the Orangemen in their attack on this Billwas to be found in their repeated insinuations as to the unfitness ofthe Estates Commissioners to exercise dispassionately the functionswhich would be demanded of them. In this the Unionists were hoist withtheir own petard, for the necessity recognised by the Government forplacing the Estates Commissioners in a position other than that of mereExecutive officers, by giving them a judicial tenure independent ofministerial pressure or party influences, was strongly shown by theincident of the Moore-Bailey correspondence of last session, whichshould provide food for reflection on the part of those who imagine thatintimidation is to be found in Ireland in use only on the National side. Mr. Moore, the most active of the Orangemen, asked in a supplementaryquestion whether it was not a fact that the delay in the EstatesCommissioners' Office was due to Mr. Commissioner Bailey's continuedpresence in London. These visits, it should be noted, were paid toLondon by Mr. Bailey in the discharge of his official duties for thepurpose of consultations with the Government in connection with theEvicted Tenants Bill. On reading in the papers Mr. Moore's questionimplying negligence to his duties on his part, Mr. Bailey wrote to Mr. Moore the following letter, marked private:--

 "UNIVERSITY CLUB, "DUBLIN, March, 1907. 

 "DEAR MOORE, --I see that as a supplemental question you asked the other day whether the delay in land purchase was due to the continued absence of Mr. Bailey. I do not know, of course, what was your object, but it may interest you to know that for the last year I attended more days in the office than either of my colleagues, and that, as a matter of fact, I did not take much more than half the vacation to which I was entitled. You will thus see that you have been strangely misinformed, and I can only surmise that another of my colleagues was meant. 

 "Faithfully yours, "W. F. BAILEY. "

To this Mr. Moore replied:--

 "ULSTER CLUB, "BELFAST, March 19th. 

 "DEAR BAILEY, --You were appointed by a Unionist Government to see fair play between Wrench and Finucane, and you have sold the pass on every occasion. The first thing my colleagues and I will do when we come back, which will not be very far off, will be to press for an inquiry into the working of your department. You can destroy your evidence now, and show this to whom you please. 

 "Yours truly, "W. MOORE. "

In reply the Estates Commissioner wrote:--

 "Mr. Bailey desires to acknowledge receipt of Mr. Moore's letter of the 19th inst. , and inasmuch as it contains grave statements of a threatening and unfounded character he will take an early opportunity of bringing the matter under notice in the proper quarter. "

The final letter was Mr. Moore's reply:--

 "ULSTER CLUB, "BELFAST, March 25th. 

 "Mr. Moore hopes that when Mr. Bailey publishes the correspondence he will make it clear that Mr. Moore's reply was directed to a disloyal attack by Mr. Bailey on one of his colleagues in his letter to Mr. Moore. This is all that was omitted from Mr. Moore's reply. "

The next step in this discreditable incident occurred on July 23rd, onwhich day Mr. Moore denounced Mr. Bailey in the House of Commons for hispartisanship towards the Nationalists, and gave a graphic picture of theprivate letter which Mr. Bailey had written to him to protest againsthis personal attacks. Mr. Redmond rose and asked that Mr. Russell shouldread to the House Mr. Moore's reply, and Mr. Russell thereupon read thesecond of the letters given above, upon which Mr. Balfour, regardless ofhis own share in the partial suppression of the Wyndham-MacDonnell_dossier_ a few years before, demanded the production of the wholecorrespondence. This was done on July 26th, when Mr. Moore read theletters in the order given above. In his personal explanation herepresented it as an extremely suspicious circumstance that Mr. Baileyhad been seen in the Lobby in conversation with the Nationalists. "Thatmay be legitimate, " he said, "but I think it very undesirable, " and inthe very next breath he confessed that another of the Commissioners wasa particular and personal friend of his own, to whom he would have shownthe first letter from Mr. Bailey if it had not been marked private. 

The comment of the _Times_--in which Mr. Moore as a rule finds an activeadmirer of his political methods--is interesting:--

"Mr. Bailey is a public servant entrusted with certain quasi-judicialfunctions. That a member of Parliament, whatever may be his opinions ofthe conduct of such an official, should inform him that he had beenappointed 'to see fair play' between his colleagues, and that he had notseen it, and should couple this charge with a promise to press for aninquiry into the working of the department whenever there should be achange of Government, is indefensible. "

The whole incident is worthy of attention as showing the atmosphere ofsuspicious hostility with which the Orange faction in Ireland surroundsevery act even of Civil Servants and Executive Officers who are not asactive supporters of the ascendancy as they would wish. 

Of further legislation dealing with the laws of tenure, the Town TenantsAct of 1906, which Mr. Balfour denounced as highway robbery, givestenants in towns compensation for disturbance so as to prevent alandlord making a vexatious use of his rights. An attempt was made bythe House of Lords to limit the compensation so paid to one year's rent, but the rejection of the amendment by the House of Commons wasacquiesced in, and no such limitation exists in the Act. 

With regard to the question of the agricultural labourers, the fact thatthe last Census Report discloses that there are in Ireland nearly 10, 000"houses" with one room and one window apiece, wretched cabins inhabitedby about 40, 000 people, the peat smoke from the fire in which escapesthrough a hole in the thatch, gives some idea of the miserableconditions existing in parts of the West of Ireland. Of the quarter of amillion of cottages in the second class of the Census--those, that is, with from one to four doors and windows--a large number also no doubtare quite unfit for habitation, and do much in the way of leading to theasylum or to emigration. It is to secure the replacement of these bycheap sanitary and comfortable cottages that the Labourers' Acts, eversince the first of the series introduced by the Irish Party in 1883, have been passed. By them Boards of Guardians, and by the LocalGovernment Act, Rural District Councils, may build such cottages. In1905, 18, 000 cottages had been built under existing Acts, and they arelet to tenants at rents of from 10d. To 1s. A week, but the difficultyhad always been to effect the improvements sufficiently rapidly owing tothe costly and elaborate procedure which involved an appeal to the PrivyCouncil and a heavy burden on the rates of a poverty-stricken community. The Act of 1906 has simplified procedure by replacing the appeal to thePrivy Council by an appeal to the Local Government Board, and that itwas needful is seen from the fact that under Wyndham's Act only 25cottages were built. It is hoped thereby to circumvent the apathy ofDistrict Councils, and their parsimony is to be appeased by the factthat the funds, which are largely derived from economics in the IrishExecutive are advanced at a rate of interest, not as heretofore of 4-7/8per cent. , but, as in the case of land purchase advances, of 3-1/4 percent. , repayable in a period of 68-1/2 years. The urgency of the problemis obvious. The bearing of this state of affairs in rural housing on thefact that in 1904 two out of every thirteen deaths were due totuberculosis shows that it is impossible to overestimate its importance, and I think that this condition of things, put side by side with theother economic facts with which I have dealt, are a sufficient reply tothose who declare that conditions in Ireland would appear _couleur derose_ were they not seen through the jaundiced eyes of a discontentedpeople. 

If the catalogue of Acts of Parliament which have been found necessaryto effect the transformation of the system of tenure in Ireland from thestate in which it was forty years ago to that in which it is to-day isevidence of the pressing grievance under which the country has suffered;it is also proof that there cannot be legislation other than by shredsand patches on the part of a legislature which lacks sympathy for andknowledge of the country for which it is making laws. 

The need for exceptional and separate legislation in Ireland has beenadmitted, and the system which existed in fact, obtained legal sanctiononly in 1881, to be in its turn swept away by further legislation whichwill have a deeper economic bearing on the future of the country thanany other change since the relaxation of the Penal Laws. For the rest Icannot do better than quote, in this connection, the opinion of the mostdispassionate critic of Ireland of recent years--Herr Moritz Bonn. Speaking of the landlord who has sold his estate he says--"He has nofurther cause of friction with his former tenants, who now pay him norent. He no longer regards himself as part of an English garrison. Hewill again become an Irish patriot. He no longer talks of the unity ofthe Empire, for Home Rule has few terrors for him now. He talks of'Devolution, ' of the concession of a kind of self-government forIreland. He will struggle for a while against the designation Home Rule, because not so long ago he was declaring that he would die in the lastditch for the union of the three kingdoms, but he will soon bereconciled to it. It will not be very long till the former landlords, whose chief interests lie in Ireland, have become enthusiasticNationalists. "

CHAPTER V

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION

 "I am convinced that if the void in the lay leadership of the country be filled up by higher education of the better classes among the Catholic laity, the power of the priests, so far as it is abnormal or unnecessary, will pass away. "

 --DR. O'DEA, now Bishop of Clonfert, speaking in evidence before the Robertson Commission on University Education, as the representative of Maynooth College. Appendix to Third Report, p. 296. 

The scruples of George III. , who although as King of Ireland he yieldedto the claims of Catholics to the suffrage by giving the Royal consentto the enfranchising Act of Grattan's Parliament in 1793, were such thatthey made him declare that his coronation oath compelled him to maintainthe Protestantism of the United Parliament of the three kingdoms andexpress himself to Dundas of opinion that Pitt's emancipation proposalswere "the most Jacobinical thing ever seen. "

The continuance for thirty years of these political disabilities, andthe obligation incumbent on Catholics to support an alien Church withthe full weight of endowments and tithes, did more than anything else tomaintain the wall of prejudice between the two creeds which the eighteenyears of Grattan's Parliament had done much to destroy. 

It was James Anthony Froude who said that the absenteeism of her men ofgenius was a worse wrong to Ireland than the absenteeism of herlandlords. This evil the Union accentuated by reducing Dublin from theseat of Government, which in the middle of the eighteenth century hadbeen the second only to London in size and importance, to the status ofa provincial city from which were drawn the leaders of that liberalschool of Protestantism the rise of which was the marked feature ofIrish politics at the end of the eighteenth century. 

The dividing line between parties in England has never been one of casteor of creed, still less of both combined. In the past the Whigs couldclaim as aristocratic and as exclusive a prestige as could the Tories. In point of wealth there was little to choose, and, most important ofall, in respect of religion, though the minor clergy were very largelyTory and the Dissenters were allied to the Whigs, yet the Anglicanism ofthe great Whig families, and their appointments when in power to theEpiscopal bench and to other places of preferment, saved the Church ofEngland from being identified _in toto_ with either party in the State. 

In Ireland, unfortunately, the case was far different, for thereproperty and the Established Church found themselves ranged side by sidein the maintenance of their respective privileges against the democracy, which, as it happened, was Catholic, and which for many years after theUnion did not recover from the long and demoralising persecution of thePenal Laws. 

The aristocracy resisted emancipation, in spite of the fact that it wasadvocated by all the greatest statesmen and orators of two generations, and it did so quite as much because it was emancipation of the masses asbecause it was emancipation of the Catholics. The Church of Ireland atthe same time dreaded the reform since it had the foresight to perceivethat the outcome would be an attack upon her prerogatives and an assaultupon her position. The anticipations of both were well founded. Nineyears after the Emancipation Act, tithe, which an English Prime Ministerhad declared was as sacred as rent, was by Act of Parliament commutedinto a rent-charge no longer collected directly from the tenant, butpaid by the landlord, who, however, compensated himself for itsincidence on his shoulders by raising rents. Forty years later theChurch Act was passed, and almost simultaneously was begun the assaulton the land system which had given support to, and received it from, theChurch Establishment. 

I have heard it said by Englishmen who have watched the course ofpolitics for some years that the jingling watchword which Lord RandolphChurchill coined for the Unionists twenty years ago, that Home Rulewould spell Rome Rule, if used again to-day would to a very great extentfall flat. They have based this view, not on the assumption thatEnglishmen love Rome more, but rather upon the opinion that they carefor all religions less, and that hence the appeal to bigotry would makeless play. 

The fact, however, remains that one meets men in England with everysympathy for Irish claims who shrink nevertheless from the advocacy ofthe principle of self-government through fear lest the Protestantminority should suffer. This fear for the rights of minorities servesalways as the last ditch in which a losing cause entrenches itself, andtimid souls have always been found who hesitate at the approach of everyreform on the ground that the devil you know may turn out to be not sobad as the devil you do not know. The legislative history of the Houseof Lords during the last century, if examples of this were needed, wouldprovide them in large numbers; and as to the question of whether it isbetter that the majority or the minority of a nation should be governedagainst its will, one need scarcely say which is the principle adoptedin a normal system of Parliamentary government. The rapidity with whichunder Grattan's Parliament an emancipated Ireland ceased to beintolerant leads one to suspect that the bigotry of creeds which isattributed to us as a race is not a natural characteristic, but ratherthe outcome of external causes. This view is borne out by the opinionof Lecky, who declared that the deliberate policy of English statesmenwas "to dig a deep chasm between Catholics and Protestants, " and ifproof of the allegation is needed it is to be found in the fact that inthe middle of the eighteenth century the Protestant Primate, ArchbishopBoulter, wrote to Government concerning a certain proposal that "itunited Protestants and Papists, and if that conciliation takes place, farewell to English influence in Ireland. "

Under Grattan's Parliament Trinity College, Dublin, opened its doors, though not its endowments, to Catholics. In 1795 a petition fromMaynooth, the lay college in which was not till twenty years latersuppressed by Government for political reasons, was presented to theIrish House of Commons by Henry Grattan, protesting against theexclusion of Protestants from its halls. In the ranks of the Volunteers, who secured free trade in 1779 and Parliamentary Independence in 1782, Catholics and Protestants stood shoulder to shoulder, and theindependent legislature, which was the outcome of their efforts, grantedthe franchise to the Catholics. 

It was of course natural, when Catholics were excluded from Parliament, that the leaders of the people should have been members of theProtestant Church, but in view of the alleged bigotry at the present dayof the mass of the Irish people it is surely significant that Isaac Buttand Parnell were both members of the Church of minority, that to takethree of the fiercest opponents of the maintenance of the Union JohnMitchell was a Unitarian, Thomas Davis an Episcopalian Protestant, andJoseph Biggar a Presbyterian. At this moment of the Nationalist Membersof Parliament nine, or more than ten per cent. , are Protestants, and onemay well ask if the Orangemen have ever had a like proportion ofCatholic members of their party, and _à fortiori_ what would be thoughtof the suggestion that a member of that religion should lead them inthe House of Commons. The difficulty experienced in Great Britain bywould-be candidates of either party in securing their adoption by localassociations if they are Catholics is so common as to make the excessivebigotry alleged against the Irish Catholics, one-tenth of whoserepresentatives are Protestants, appear very much exaggerated. 

That bigotry exists among Catholics to some extent I should be the last, albeit regretfully, to deny, but I leave it to the reader to judge howfar this is the result and the natural outcome of a policy the directopposite of that pursued in Scotland, where shortly after the union ofher Parliament with that of England, the Church of the majority of thepeople was for the sake of peace established and has remained in thisprivileged position ever since. In view of the use to which the "NoPopery" cry has been put in its bearings on the Irish question, it isinteresting to consider the relations of the English Government with theCatholic Church throughout the last century and to see how far it throwslight on the justice and applicability of the taunt that Ireland ispriest-ridden. 

In 1814 the Catholics of England, in spite of the opposition of theIrish people, secured from Mgr. Quarantotti, the Vice-Prefect of thePropaganda in Rome, who was acting in the absence of Pope Pius VII. , atthat date still a prisoner in France, a letter declaring that in hisjudgment the Royal veto should be exercised on ecclesiasticalappointments in Ireland. Under O'Connell's leadership, the bishops, clergy, and people of Ireland refused to submit to the decree, andthere, in spite of the indignation of the English Catholics as a wholeand of the Catholic aristocracy of Ireland, the proposal was allowed todrop, which would have virtually given a right of _congé d'elire_ to theEnglish ministry. 

In 1782 Edmund Burke had written in his letter to a peer of Ireland onthe Penal Laws--"Never were the members of a religious sect fit toappoint the pastors of another. It is a good deal to suppose that eventhe present Castle would nominate bishops for the Irish Catholic Churchwith a religious regard for its welfare. " If this was the case underGrattan's Parliament, its application thirty years later was very muchmore cogent. Behind the scenes, however, the wires continued to bepulled, as is seen by what Melbourne told Greville in 1835, after thelatter had expressed the opinion that the sound course in Irish affairswas to open a negotiation with Rome. [11] "He then told me ... That anapplication had been made to the Pope very lately (through Seymour)expressive of the particular wish of the British Government that hewould not appoint MacHale to the vacant bishopric--anyone but him. Buton this occasion the Pope made a shrewd observation. His Holiness saidthat he had remarked that no place of preferment of any value ever fellvacant in Ireland that he did not get an application from the BritishGovernment asking for the appointment. Lord Melbourne supposed that hewas determined to show that he had the power of refusal and of opposingthe wishes of the Government, and in reply to my questions he admittedthat the Pope had generally conferred the appointment according to thewishes of the Government. "

These facts must be borne in mind on the part of those by whom theadmitted support given by the Whig Catholic "Castle Bishops" of theearly part of the nineteenth century to the Government is urged asevidence of a consistent tendency on the part of the Church in Ireland, the political views of the prelates of which, so soon as in the secondhalf of the nineteenth century Governmental lobbying ceased, were of anentirely different colour. 

At a later date Greville returned to the topic and noted that[12]"Palmerston said there was nothing to prevent our sending a minister toRome; but they had not dared to do it on account of their supposedPopish tendencies. Peel might. " Melbourne was not alone among PrimeMinisters of the time in his appeals to the Holy See. In 1844 theGovernment of Sir Robert Peel, when troubled with the manifestations ofsympathy which O'Connell was arousing, made an appeal to Gregory XVI. Todiscourage the agitation, and three years later, when the Whigs underLord John Russell were in office, Lord Minto, Lord Privy Seal, who wasPalmerston's father-in-law, was sent to Rome in the autumn recess tosecure the adherence of Pius IX. , then in the first months of hisPontificate, to the same line of action, and to bring to the notice ofHis Holiness the conduct of the Irish priesthood in supportingO'Connell. The fact that neither Gregory XVI. Nor Pio Nono made anyresponse to these appeals lends point to the sardonic comment ofDisraeli on the Minto mission--that he had gone to teach diplomacy tothe countrymen of Machiavelli. The views of Palmerston, on the otherhand, are to be seen from a letter addressed to Minto, which is extant, in which, with characteristic bluntness, the Foreign Secretary wrotethat public opinion against the Irish priests at home was so exasperatedthat nothing would give English people more satisfaction than to see afew of them hanged. 

"Can anything be more absurd, " Greville had written concerning therelations which Melbourne revealed to him as subsisting between DowningStreet and the Vatican, and the quotation is as appropriate to theselater overtures. "Can anything be more absurd or anomalous than suchrelations as these? The law prohibits any intercourse with Rome, and theGovernment, whose business it is to enforce the law, establishes aregular, but underhand, intercourse through the medium of a diplomaticagent, whose character cannot be avowed, and the ministers of thisProtestant kingdom are continually soliciting the Pope to conferappointments, the validity, even the existence, of which they do notrecognise, while the Pope, who is the chief object of our abhorrence anddread, good humouredly complies with all or nearly all their requests. "

Two years after the Minto mission, and a few months before he succeededto power in place of Peel, Lord John Russell told Charles Greville thatthe Government was "the greatest curse to Ireland, " and he spoke of"their policy of first truckling to the Orangemen, insulting, and thenmaking useless concessions to the Catholics, without firmness andjustice. "[13] It is only fair to Lord John to say that in the followingyear he ordered a Bill to be drawn up to legalise intercourse with thePope and to put an end to these repeated acts of _præmunire_ on the partof Ministers of the Crown; for a large number of constitutionalauthorities believed that their action amounted to this offence, whichhas been defined as consisting of acts tending to introduce into therealm some foreign power, more particularly that of the Pope, to thediminution of the King's authority. 

The Diplomatic Relations with the Court of Rome Bill was introduced andpassed into law, with one important amendment which we shall haveoccasion to notice later, in 1848, less than two years after Peel'sministry had been succeeded by that of Russell. The grounds upon whichits acceptance by Parliament was demanded were that the complicationsresulting from the revolutionary crisis throughout the Continent made itessential that the Foreign Office should be in a position, in dealingwith the chancelleries of Europe, to obtain direct recognition, and as aresult first-hand information, as to the attitude of the Holy See in anysituations which might arise; and the acceptance by Parliament of thechange of policy which the Bill was intended to effect, on theunderstanding that diplomatic negotiations should be confined to foreignaffairs, may be seen in the words of Earl Fitzwilliam in the House ofLords. In his speech in support of the Bill he declared that "the verylast subject upon which the Government should communicate with theCourt of Rome was that which had reference to relations which it shouldhave with its own Roman Catholic subjects. "[14]

The Act was an enabling Act, and its proposals, like those as toconcurrent endowment which Russell had made three years earlier, wereforgotten in 1850, when, in the matter of the Ecclesiastical TitlesBill, the Prime Minister played the part which Leech immortalised asthat of "the little boy who chalked up 'No Popery' and then ran away. "

Even in the interval before this occurred the provisions of the Act werenot put in force. No appointment pursuant to the statute was ever made, but its object was indirectly secured by the fact that a Secretary ofLegation, nominally accredited to the Court of the Grand Duke ofTuscany, was kept in residence in Rome, where he served as a _de facto_Minister to the Vatican. This state of affairs was maintained until LordDerby recalled Jervoise, who was then Secretary, from Rome, and fromthat date even this measure of diplomatic representation at the Vaticanhas ceased to exist. 

The Bill of 1848, as we have seen, was directed to the establishment ofrelations with "the Court of Rome. " An amendment on the part of theBishop of Winchester, which was accepted and passed into law, substituted for these words the phrase "Sovereign of the Roman States, "and in consequence, after the loss of the Temporal Power, the Act wasrepealed by the Statute Law Revision Act, 1875, so that the law wasrestored to that condition, in regard to this subject, in which it hadbeen before Lord John Russell introduced the Act of 1848. 

All this, it will be said, is ancient history, but the fact that it isfifty years old does not affect my point, which is this--that themaintenance of an unnatural polity can only be secured by means of aseries of subterfuges such as these employed by Unionist Governments, both Whig and Tory, by which, while sympathy was extended to Orangemenin the open, the Ministry endeavoured to twitch the red sleeves of theRoman Curia in the back stairs of the Vatican. 

As Macaulay picturesquely put it, at any moment Exeter Hall might raiseits war whoop and the Orangemen would begin to bray, and there was nochoice, one must suppose, but that you should not let your right handknow what your left hand was doing. 

In 1881 Mr. Gladstone appealed to Cardinal Newman to apprise the Pope ofthe violent speeches which were being delivered by certain priests inIreland, for whose language he said he held the Pope, if informed of it, morally responsible, and he asked the English Cardinal for hisassistance. To this Newman replied that the Pope was not supreme inpolitical matters, his action as to whether a political party iscensurable is not direct, and, moreover, it lay with the bishops tocensure the clergy for their language if they thought it intemperate, and the interposition of the Holy See was not called for by thecircumstances of the case. 

The policy, however, which had been applied before was employed oncemore in another direction in the teeth of British sentiment if not ofBritish law. A mortgage had been foreclosed on Parnell's estate, and theIrish newspapers having obtained knowledge of the fact raised acollection which became known as the Parnell Tribute, and which washeaded by a subscription from the Archbishop of Cashel. If precedentwere needed for this form of recognition of national services it was tobe found in the grant of £50, 000--which might, had he been willing, havebeen double that amount--which was made to Grattan by the emancipatedIrish House of Commons, but more exact parallels perhaps are to be foundin "O'Connel's Rent, " which Greville described as "nobly paid and noblyearned, " or in the great collection which marked the popularappreciation in Great Britain of Cobden's services in securing therepeal of the Corn Laws. In the autumn of 1881, when the ParnellTribute was initiated, the Land League agitation was in full swing inIreland, and about the same time Mr. George Errington, an EnglishCatholic Whig Member of Parliament, who was about to spend the winter inRome, called on Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary, and was given byhim an introduction to the Cardinal Secretary of State. In this wise Mr. Errington went, in the phrase of the day, "to keep the Vatican in goodhumour, " and if he was not the accredited representative of HerBrittanic Majesty--for that would have been illegal--at any rate he wentwith the sanction and under the ægis of the Foreign Office. 

The upshot was a Papal rescript, signed by Cardinal Simeoni, thePrefect, and Mgr. Jacobini, the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation DePropagatione Fide, which condemned the Tribute owing to the Land Leagueagitation. 

"The collection called 'The Parnell Testimonial Fund, '" so ran therescript, "cannot be approved, and consequently it cannot be toleratedthat any ecclesiastic, much less a bishop, should take any part whateverin recommending or promoting it. "

The bishops and clergy withdrew from any further action in connectionwith the Tribute Fund, but the laity gave the lie to the suggestion thatthey are under the thumb of their priests in matters which are notwithin the sphere of faith or morals. The rescript was promulgated inMay, and at this time the subscription list amounted to less than£8, 000. Within a month it had doubled, and by the end of the year itamounted to £37, 000. The amount of the mortgage was £13, 000. As Parnell, in a characteristically laconic way, put it in his evidence before theCommission, "The Irish people raised a collection for me to pay off theamount of a mortgage. The amount of the collection considerably exceededthe amount necessary. " The retort of the country to the document"_Qualecumque de Parnellio_, " had been, in the phrase then current, to"make Peter's pence into Parnell's pounds. "

Two years after the Simeoni letter Mr. Errington was again in Rome, attempting this time to secure the exclusion from the successorship toCardinal M'Cabe, of Dr. Walsh of Maynooth, as Archbishop of Dublin. Aletter on the subject fell into the hands of the editor of _UnitedIreland_, who published it in his paper, and so in this way thwarted theobjects of the second Errington mission. "If we want to hold Ireland byforce, " said Joseph Cowen, the Radical member for Newcastle, "let us doit ourselves; let us not call in the Pope, whom we are always attacking, to help us. "

A further instance may be recounted of the manner in which the people ofwhat is, after Spain, the most Catholic country in Europe, whilesubmitting to the Pope implicitly in matters which are _de fide_, refused to take their cue in purely political matters from Rome. 

The rejection of the Home Rule Bill and of the Land Bill of 1886, andthe return of the Conservatives to power, led to a recrudescence of theland war, to which the hope of ameliorative legislation had temporarilyput a truce. The Plan of Campaign, which was then launched--of which ithas been said that no agrarian movement was ever so unstained bycrime--was of the following nature:--The tenants of a locality were toform themselves into an association, each member of which was to profferto the landlord or his agent a sum which was estimated by the generalbody as a fair rent for his holding. These sums, if refused by thelandlord, were pooled and divided by the association for the maintenanceof those tenants who were evicted. 

The wheels were set in motion in Rome to obtain a ruling from the HolyOffice as to whether such action was justifiable or not. Mgr. Persico, the head of the Oriental rite in the Propaganda, who had had muchexperience of English speaking people in the East, was sent to Irelandin July, 1887, to investigate the question on the spot. In April, 1888, a rescript was issued by the Holy Office to the bishops of Irelandcondemning the Plan of Campaign and boycotting on the ground that theywere contrary to both natural justice and Christian charity. With theDecree was sent to the bishops a circular letter, signed by CardinalMonaco, the Secretary of the Holy Office, which contained the followingstatement:--"The justice of the decision will be readily seen by anyonewho applies his mind to consider that a rent agreed upon by mutualconsent cannot, without violation of a contract, be diminished at themere will of a tenant, especially when there are tribunals appointed forsettling such controversies and reducing unjust rents within the boundsof equity after taking into account the causes which diminish the valueof the land.... Finally, it is contrary to justice and to charity topersecute by a social interdict those who are satisfied to pay rentsagreed upon, or those who, in the exercise of their right, take vacantlands. "

The _Tablet_, the organ of English Catholicism, speaking of thedecision, said that happily there was no suspicion of politics about it, and as to the letter of Cardinal Monaco la Valetta, it wrote--"It addscertain reasons which perhaps may have led the Congregation to answer asthey have done, but these constitute no part of the official reply. " Thenext step in this episode should be well pondered by those who accusethe Irish of a blind Ultramontanism. The bishops, with one exception, omitted to publish the rescript to their flocks, and the Archbishop ofCashel went so far as to send £50 to the funds of the Plan of Campaign. Parnell, referring publicly to the rescript as "a document from adistant country, " declared that his Catholic colleagues must decide forthemselves what action to take. Mr. Dillon contradicted the statementsin Cardinal Monaco's letter to the effect that the contracts werevoluntary or that the campaign fund of the Land League had beencollected by extortion. A meeting of forty Catholic members ofParliament assembled in Dublin, and in the Mansion House in that citysigned a document denying the allegations about free contracts, fairrent, the Land Commission, and the rest, declared that the conclusionshad been drawn from erroneous premises, and while asserting theircomplete obedience to the Holy See in spiritual matters, no lessstrongly repudiated the suggestion that Rome had any right to interferein matters of a political nature. Mass meetings were held in the PhoenixPark in Dublin, and in Cork, which indorsed this position by popularvote. The Orangemen were delighted at the imminence of a schism, and thediscomfiture of the Catholics under a decree, the result of internaldivision, was hailed with pleasure only by the enemies of the Church. Inthe event they were doomed to disappointment, for in the closing days ofthe year the Holy Father wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Dublinconcerning his action, which had been "so sadly misunderstood, " in whichhe wrote that "as to the counsels that we have given to the people ofIreland from time to time and our recent decree, we were moved in thesethings, not only by the consideration of what is conformable to truthand justice, but also by the desire of advancing your interests. Forsuch is our affection for you that it does not suffer us to allow thecause in which Ireland is struggling to be weakened by the introductionof anything that could justly be brought in reproach against it. "

In this manner was closed an incident which was expected by its foes tothreaten the allegiance of Ireland, and with it that of more than halfthe Catholics in England, to the Holy See. 

The Nationalist members at the Mansion House had flatly declared thatthe decree was an instrument of the unscrupulous enemies both of Irelandand of the Holy See. The _Tablet_, which declared that it had beenpromulgated with full and intimate knowledge of all the circumstances, retorted--"As a matter of fact we believe that the English Governmenthas taken no steps, direct or indirect, to obtain the pronouncement, which is based solely on the reports of Mgr. Persico and the documentsand evidence which accompanied them. " And it went on to add that Persicowas expected to return to Ireland to watch the application of thedecree. 

Beyond this, until recently, nothing more was known except that it wasremarked that negotiations between the Duke of Norfolk and the Vaticanwere broken off, and that the former left Rome suddenly for Englandwithout having an audience with the Pope, for which arrangements hadbeen made. The forecast of the _Tablet_ as to Mgr. Persico's return toIreland to see that the terms of the decree were enforced and applied, was not correct. The responsibility for the decree was everywhere laidon his shoulders, and the _Tablet_ for April 27th, 1889, records that anAddress was presented to Mgr. Persico after his return to Rome "as anexpression of respect, and in the fervent hope that his Excellency'smission might largely conduce to the glory of God, the increase ofcharity, and the restoration of peace and goodwill among men. "

It is only in the last couple of years, with the publications ofPersico's correspondence with Cardinal Manning, [15] that the real factsof the case have been known. After spending six months in Ireland, theenvoy was obliged, for reasons of health, to move to Devonshire inJanuary, 1888. He had orders from Rome to remain in the British Islands, but further, so he told the Cardinal in his letter, "I must not residein London so as to give not the least suspicion that I have anything todo with the British Government. " As to the promulgation of the decree, it was done without his knowledge and, what is more, against hisjudgment. Having arrived in Ireland in July, 1887, he had concluded hisinvestigations by the middle of the month of December of that year. Hisrequests that the mission might be terminated were met by the reply thatit was to continue indefinitely, and he was told that if he wished, forreasons of health, to leave Ireland during the winter months he might doso, but that he must remain in the British Isles. 

After the issue of the rescript he wrote to the English Cardinal inthese words:--"It is known to your Eminence that I did not expect at allthe said decree, that I was never so much surprised in my life as when Ireceived the bare circular from Propaganda on the morning of the 28thulto. And fancy, I received the bare circular, as I suppose every Irishbishop did, without a letter or a word of instruction or explanation. And what is more unaccountable to me, only the day before I had receiveda letter from the Secretary for the Extraordinary EcclesiasticalAffairs, telling me that nothing had been done about Irish affairs, andthat my report and other letters were still _nell casetta del Emo. Rampolla!_ And yet the whole world thinks and says that the Holy Officehas acted on my report, and that the decree is based upon the same! Notonly all the Roman correspondents but all the newspapers _avec le Tableten tête_ proclaim and report the same thing! I wish that my report andall my letters had been studied and seriously considered, and thataction had been taken from the same! Above all, I had proposed andinsisted upon it, that whatever was necessary to be done ought to bedone with, and through, the bishops. " Of this there is ample proof inthe earlier letters, and the proposal which he made was that the fourarchbishops and one bishop for every province should be summoned to Rometo "prepare and settle things. " Writing on the Feast of the Epiphany in1888, he said to Manning:--"I agree fully with your Eminence that thetrue Nunciatura for England and Ireland is the Episcopate. If thebishops do not know the state of the country they are not fit to bebishops. If they do, what more can _una persona ufficiosa o ufficiale_do for the Holy See?" And again--"I fully understand what your Eminenceadds, the English people tolerate the Catholic Church as a spiritualbody. The first sign of a political action on the Government wouldrekindle all the old fears, suspicions, and hostility. It is a greatpity they do not realise this in Rome. And it is also a great pity thatEnglish Catholics do not understand all this. I am sure that HisHoliness understands it well, but I share your fears that those abouthim may harass him with the fickle and vain glory that would accrue tothe Holy See by having an accredited representative from England also. "

It is impossible not to infer from this that the English Catholics wereengaged in an attempt to secure diplomatic recognition by Great Britainof the Holy See, and that their anxiety to secure this was in somemeasure connected with their desire to override the feelings andopinions of the Irish Episcopate, but the overtures of Lord Salisburywere as fruitless as those of Russell forty years before. 

The last letter from Mgr. Persico to the English Cardinal, which hasbeen reprinted, reiterates the disclaimer of responsibility for theaction of the Vatican, in these words:--

"I had no idea that anything had been done about Irish affairs much lessthought that some questions had been referred to the Holy Office, andthe first knowledge I had of the decree was on the morning of the 28thApril, when I received the bare circular sent me by Propaganda. I mustadd that had I known of such a thing I would have felt it my duty tomake proper representations to the Holy See. "

In view of this it is interesting to read the naïve record in the_Tablet_ of those who signed the address to Persico on the totally wrongassumption that he and his report were the _causa causans_ of thedecree. "The signatures, " says the _Tablet_, "comprise those of all theCatholic peers in Ireland (14 in number), four Privy Councillors, tenhonourables, two Lords Lieutenants of counties, nineteen baronets, fifty-four deputy-lieutenants, two hundred and ninety-seven magistrates, and a large number of the learned and military professions. " Theremarkable thing about this memorial was the absence of the names of anyclerics, regular or secular, parish priests or prelates. 

There are in Ireland a great many more Protestant Nationalists than theEnglish Press allows its readers to suspect, and it is one of these who, in a recent novel, declares in a wild hyperbole that if the bishops cansecure the continuance of English Government for the next half centuryIreland will have become the Church's property. No one, of course, withany sense of proportion takes seriously such a statement as this, but Iallude to it as showing, in its extreme anti-clericalism, the sametendency, very much magnified, as I have observed to a great extent inthe Protestant Nationalist as a class, who has not, as I believe, hadtime to eliminate the last taint of No Popery feeling in which forgenerations he and his forbears have been steeped. The existence of thisanti-clerical spirit, and, what is more to the point, its expressionwith the proverbial tactlessness of the political convert, for such aone the Protestant Nationalist usually is, make it very essential thatthe Catholic clergy should walk warily and avoid giving any handle totheir detractors, for in Ireland, and perhaps most of all in the Churchin Ireland, there is need to use the prayer of the faithfulCommons--"that the best possible construction be put on one's motives. "How small is the basis for the allegation that the clergy are playingonly for the Church's hand and are prepared to sacrifice for this endthe welfare of the country is shown, I think, by the evidence which Ihave adduced. But in spite of their ill success in the past there is apersistent notion on the part of both English parties that they can dragin ecclesiastical influence to redress the political balance in theirfavour. The exposure in the Life of Lord Randolph Churchill of themanner in which he proposed to Lord Salisbury to win over the Church toUnionism is an example of what I mean:--[16]

"I have no objection to Sexton and Healy knowing the deliberateintention of the Government on the subject of Irish education, but itwould not do for the letter or communication to be made public, for theeffect of publicity on Lancashire would be unfortunate.... It is thebishops entirely to whom I look in future to mitigate or postpone theHome Rule onslaught. Let us only be enabled to occupy a year with theeducation question. By that time I am certain Parnell's party will havebecome seriously disintegrated. Personal jealousies, Governmentinfluences, Davitt and Fenian intrigues, will be at work upon thedevoted band of eighty. The bishops, who in their hearts hate Parnell, and don't care a scrap for Home Rule, having safely acquired control ofIrish education, will, according to my calculation, complete the rout. That is my policy, and I know it is sound and good, and the onlypossible Tory policy. " And again he wrote--"My opinion is that if youapproach the archbishops through proper channels, if you deal infriendly remonstrances and active assurances ... The tremendous force ofthe Catholic Church will gradually and insensibly come over to the sideof the Tory Party. "

All this, of course, is perfectly consistent with the views which in1884 the leader of the Fourth Party had expressed when, speaking on theFranchise Bill, he declared his opinion that "the agricultural peasantis much more under the proper and legitimate influence of the RomanCatholic priesthood than the lower classes in the towns. "[17] But how isone to reconcile either of these declarations with his action in 1886, when, the tremendous force of the Catholic Church not having come overto the Tory side, he "decided to play the Orange card, which, pleaseGod, will prove a trump, " and went, with his hands red from makingovertures to what they considered the scarlet woman, to rally theOrangemen with the haunting jingle that Home Rule would be Rome Rule. 

This was before the general election of 1886. Seven years later, whenanother election was approaching, he returned to the charge, this timein a letter to Lord Justice FitzGibbon:--"What is the great feature, " hewrote, "of the political situation in Ireland now? The resurrection ingreat force of priestly domination in political matters. Now I wouldcool the ardour of these potentates for Mr. G. By at once offering themthe largest concessions on education--primary, intermediate, anduniversity--which justice and generosity could admit of. I would notgive them everything before the general election, but I would give agood lot, and keep a good lot for the new Parliament. I do not thinkthey could resist the bribe, and the soothing effect of such a policy onthe Irish vote and attitude would be marked. Of course the concessionswould have to be very large--almost as large as what the bishops haveever asked for, but preserving intact Trinity College. It would assumethe material shape of a money subsidy. "[18]

I have set down without omissions and with nothing extenuate the data onwhich is based the indictment that the clergy have been, and are, anti-national, and I ask the reader to say whether the charge isunsupported or not. That overtures have again and again been made _subrosa_ to the clergy to wean them from the popular side is proved up tothe hilt, but that in any single instance they have closed with theoffers or been forced by the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline intocompliance, appears to me not proven, as is also the imputation that thepeople have in any degree departed from the lines of O'Connell'sdictum--that we take our theology from Rome, but our politics we preferof home manufacture. If the action of Cardinal Cullen with regard to theTenant League in 1855 be adduced as an argument in favour of theproposition, it must be remembered that though as Primate his voice waspreponderant and his policy was affected, in Dr. MacHale, the Archbishopof Tuam, an exponent of opposite views was to be found, and that it ison the lines laid down by MacHale, and not those advocated by Cullen, that the policy of the Catholic Church in Ireland has as a rule beenbased. 

The clergy in the early part of the nineteenth century were brought upin foreign seminaries, where passive obedience to the established orderwas inculcated, and where, as was natural in such places, a horror ofthe Jacobinical principles of the French revolution created among theman antagonism to any violent agitation, which admittedly or not drew itsinspiration from that source, but the names of Dr. Doyle of Kildare, ofDr. Duggan of Clonfert, of Dr. Croke of Cashel, of Dr. M'Cormick, toname only four, show how much support was given to the popular cause inIreland by a considerable section of the higher clergy. 

To Protestant Nationalists I would commend that expression of opinion ofthe greatest of their number--Edmund Burke--who, speaking of thereligion of the mass of his countrymen, declared that in his opinion "itought to be cherished as a good, though not the most preferable good ifa choice was now to be made, and not tolerated as an inevitable evil. Itis extraordinary that there should still be need to emphasise the factthat the Catholicism of Ireland is inevitable and that there is no hopeof making the country abjure it--but this is the case. "

Half a century ago, when proselytism was in full swing in a countryweakened by famine, Protestants were sanguine on this point. SirFrancis Head, in a volume which bears the very naïve title of "AFortnight in Ireland, " declared that within a couple of years there canexist no doubt whatever that the Protestant population of Ireland willform the majority, and Rev. A. R. Dallas, one of the leadingproselytisers in the country, borrowing a Biblical metaphor, announcedthat "the walls of Irish Romanism had been circumvented again andagain, and at the trumpet blast that sounded in the wailings of thefamine they may be said to have fallen flat. This is the point of hopein Ireland's present crisis. "

With the maintenance by the Church of her hold over the peoplegovernments have recognised the influence of the priests, and have triedto turn it to their own use by methods into which they have been afraidto let the light of day; and for the rest, with every trouble and everydiscontent, has arisen the parrot cry of _cherchez le prêtre_. Conscientious objections to certain forms of education are respected inEngland when they are emphasised by passive resistance. How many timeshave the same objections in Ireland been put down to clericalobscurantism? The priest in politics we have been told _ad nauseam_ isthe curse of Ireland, but clerical interference is not unknown inEnglish villages, and one has heard of dissenting ministers whose handsare not quite unstained by the defilement of political partisanship. Itis not the habit that makes the monk, and it is possible forsacerdotalism to be as rampant among the most rigid of dissenters as inChurch itself. An example of the falsehoods which have at intervals tobe nailed to the counter was the one which declared that under thecompulsion of their priests a considerable part of the Irish electoratefalsely declared themselves to be illiterate, so that the secrecy of theballot might be avoided and their votes might be regulated by theclergy. On a comparison of the statistics of illiterate voters and theCensus of illiteracy a similar proportion was found to exist as thatbetween the total number of voters and the whole population, in this waycompletely disproving the allegation. 

A great deal of capital has of late been made of the alleged excessivechurch building in Ireland during the last few years. In the light ofthe fact that less than forty years have passed since the money of thesesame peasants for the expenditure of which so much concern is nowexpressed, was devoted to the maintenance of what Disraeli admitted tobe an alien Church, it is a little surprising to hear this taunt fromEnglishmen and Protestants. Relieved, as the people have been only inthe last generation, from this obligation it is not strange that thework of providing churches for their own worship should have beenundertaken. The Catholic churches have in large measure been built bythe contributions of successful emigrants, subscribed in many instanceswith the secondary object of providing work in building during times ofdistress. There are 2, 400 Catholic and 1, 500 Protestant churches inIreland at the present moment, and there is one Episcopalian Protestantchurch for every 320 members of that creed and one Catholic church forevery 1, 368 Catholics. 

Sir Horace Plunkett, who started this new fashion of attack by giving itthe cachet of respectability in the first edition of "Ireland in the NewCentury, " after declaring that he has "come to the conclusion that theimmense power of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy has been singularlylittle abused, " goes on to add in connection with the topic on which weare touching that "without a doubt a good many motives are unfortunatelyat work in the church-building movement which have but remote connectionwith religion. " What is meant by this I cannot pretend to say. It seemsto me unworthy of a gentleman in Sir Horace's position, and with hisacknowledged good intentions to adopt an attitude which can only becompared to that which Pope satirised in the lines:--

 "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer, Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. "

But the remarkable part of the facts about this unframed charge is thatin the popular edition of Sir Horace's book, published in 1905, thepassage which I have quoted is omitted, and in spite of the fact thatnearly forty pages are devoted to an Epilogue containing answers to hiscritics, the author makes no mention of its omission, and gives noreason for the implied retractation of what may be interpreted as beinga very grave charge. 

The books of one or two writers on the abuses of clericalism in Ireland, written in violent, unmeasured invective, and innocent--which is moreimportant--of all notion of the value of evidence, are, I understand, eagerly snapped up and readily believed by pious Protestants in England, and it is from these books that many Englishmen have learnt all thatthey know to-day about the Church in Ireland. 

The picture which is presented of the Irish priest as a money-grabbingmartinet, whom his flock regard with mingled sentiments of detestationand fear, is a caricature as libellous as it is grotesque. Even the highstandard of sexual morality which prevails in the country is attacked asbeing merely the result of early marriages, inculcated by a priesthoodthirsting for marriage fees, and virtue itself is in this way depictedas being nothing but the bye-product of grasping avarice. I would nothave thought it necessary to have touched on this subject if I were notassured of the vast circulation of the type of books to which I refer, which are not worth powder and shot, more particularly in dissenting andevangelical circles in England. The reiterated assertion by theirauthor that he is a Catholic produces the entirely false impressionthat he is the spokesman of a considerable body of Catholics in Irelandwhose mouths are closed by the fear of consequences. 

One fact which shows how bitter is the hatred towards the religion ofIreland on the part of a section of the population of England isthis--that there is no more certain method by which a book on thatcountry can be assured of advertisement and quotation in the Englishparty Press of the baser kind, which for partisan reasons plays on thebigotry of English people by the booming of such books, no matter howscurrilous or how vile are their innuendoes. The comment of M. Paul-Dubois on these attempts to foist on the Catholic Churchresponsibility for the evil case in which Ireland finds herself, deserves quotation:--"Cette thèse grossière et fanatique ne vautl'honneur d'un devellopment ni d'une discussion: contentons nous deremarquer comme il est habile et simple de rejeter sur Rome laresponsabilité des malheurs d'Erin en disculpant ainsi et l'Angleterreet la colonie anglaise en Irlande!"

The energy of the Irish priesthood in the advocacy of temperance--anenergy which in a climate like that of Ireland can never be excessive;their social work in the encouragement of the industrial revival by thestarting of agricultural and co-operative societies, and, most of all atthis time, of the Industrial Development Association; theirwhole-hearted assistance in the work of the Gaelic League, and their aidin the discouragement of emigration--all these, apart from theirspiritual labours, are factors which have increased their claims to theaffection of the people to whom they minister and the respect of theirnon-Catholic fellow-countrymen. They have discouraged violence, and theweight of their Church has always been directed against secretsocieties, and if their power has been great it is only because theyhave been in full sympathy with their flocks. In 1848 the clergy madesuch efforts to check the excesses of the abortive insurrection of thatyear that Lord Clarendon, the Viceroy, wrote to Lord John Russell totell him that something must be done for the clergy, but the bigotry ofthe English and Scottish people stood in the way. The No Rent Manifestoof 1881 fell flat owing to the ecclesiastical condemnation which itincurred on the ground that it involved repudiation of debts. Everyarticle in the Press of Europe and America on the problem of "racesuicide" contained a well-deserved tribute to the moral influence of theIrish clergy on their flocks in this direction, and the figures ofillegitimacy show the same results of their inculcation of sexualmorality. In 1904 there were 3. 9 per cent. Of such births in England andWales, in Scotland 6. 46, and in Ireland 2. 5. The highest rate inIreland--3. 4 in Ulster--is almost the same as the lowest in Scotland--inDumbartonshire--and the contrast between the Scottish maximum of 14. 3 inKincardine and the Irish minimum of . 7 in Connacht needs no comment. 

With regard to ecclesiasticism in the lower branches of education, whileconvinced that popular control over the secular branches, leaving thereligious branches of such education completely in the hands of theclergy, is the ideal arrangement, one must admit that there is astriking testimony contained in the Report on Primary Education drawn upin 1904 by Mr. F. H. Dale, as to the efficiency and good management ofthe Convent Schools in Ireland, which, it should be noted, are at thesame time those of least expense to the State. The cleanliness andneatness of the premises, the supervision and management on the part ofthe Community, the order and tone of the children, are all highlypraised; and in a further Report on Intermediate Education, prepared bythe same Inspector of Schools jointly with a colleague, will be foundequally strong insistence on the well-known success and efficiency ofthe three hundred schools of the Christian Brothers, in which, withouta penny of State aid, are educated some 30, 000 pupils; and it was nodoubt to the education given by the Christian Brothers that theProtestant Bishop of Killaloe referred when, in an address to hisdiocesan synod five years ago, he generously recognised the superiorityof the Catholic over the Protestant schools in Ireland. 

It was Lord Lytton, I think, who described the Established Church inIreland as the greatest bull in the language, since it was so calledbecause it was a church not for the Irish. All who are acquainted withthose masterpieces of Swift's satire--the Drapier Letters--and whoappreciate the fact that Berkeley--the most distinguished of IrishProtestant bishops--was refused the Primacy of Ireland because he was anIrishman, and that to appoint any but an Englishman or a Scotsman wouldbe to depart from the policy followed throughout the whole of theeighteenth century, will see that at that time, at any rate, it deservedthe censure which it has received as a foreign body maintained fordenationalising purposes. 

The maintenance until thirty-eight years ago of the Established Church, which raised its mitred head in a country where its adherents formedone-eighth of the population, but where its funds were extorted fromthose who regarded its doctrines as heresy, was, I verily believe, the_fons et origo_ of the sectarian bitterness which still persists amongCatholics, "Lui demander, " wrote a French observer of the position ofthe Catholic Church in the days before 1870, "de s'associer a une telleentreprise lui parait une injure; lui forcer est une violence; lacontinuance de cette violence est une persecution. " You would find ithard to make me believe that had England been the scene of a similaranomaly, with the _rôles_, of course, exchanged, the feelings towardsthe Catholic Church, even forty years after its disestablishment, wouldbe the most cordial. The proposals of Pitt for the State payment ofthe Catholic priesthood were constantly revived and advocated throughoutthe century. Lord Clarendon's views, which have just been quoted, were amere echo of the opinion expressed by Lord John Russell in favour ofconcurrent endowment in 1844, and there is a significant allusion on thepart of Charles Greville fourteen years earlier to the feeling of thattime, in which, after speaking about Irish disaffection, he shows theresults which were expected from concurrent endowment by commentingunfavourably on the policy which the Government pursued "instead ofdepriving him (O'Connell) of half his influence by paying the priestsand so getting them under the influence of the Government. "[19]

The whole question was considered merely in the abstract until theFenian outburst of the sixties--as Mr. Gladstone freely admitted--openedmen's eyes to this among the other serious problems of Irish government. It required all the violence of desperate men to call, attention to acondition of things in which the Church which was established numberedless than one-eighth of the inhabitants of the country among itsadherents. 

The part of the country in which the greatest proportion of EpiscopalianProtestants was to be found was Ulster, and there they were only 20 percent. Of the people, while in Munster and Connacht they were only 5 and4 per cent. Respectively. In 199 out of 2, 428 parishes in Ireland therewas not a single member of the Established Church. The net revenue ofthe Church was £600, 000, and of this two archbishops and ten bishopsreceived one-tenth. The mode of solving the inequitable state of affairswhich produced least resistance lay in the direction of concurrentendowment. Earl Russell suggested the endowment of Catholics andPresbyterians and the reduction of Episcopalian revenues to one-eighthof their existing amount. To the Presbyterians his plan would haveentailed a gain, in so far as the Regium Donum would have beenincreased, but the opposition to it of the Catholics, in spite of thefact that levelling up rather than planing down appealed not only toRussell but to Grey and Disraeli, resulted in its abandonment, and thequestion of disestablishment became the recognised solution of thedifficulty. 

With the introduction of the Bill in 1869 began those dire propheciesand grim forebodings which have formed a running accompaniment to everyIrish reform, and Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals were denounced forhaving sanctioned sacrilege. In the end the Church saved from theburning more than in any equitable sense she was entitled to claim. TheRepresentative Body, which was incorporated in 1870, received about ninemillions for commuted salaries, half a million in lieu of privateendowments, and another three-quarters of a million was handed over tolay patrons. 

The commutation paid to the Non-Conformists for the Regium Donum andother payments was nearly £800, 000, and in lieu of the Maynooth grantthe Catholic Church received less than £400, 000, the income from whichfund only covers about one-third of the annual cost of maintenance ofMaynooth. The history of this grant dates from the £9, 000 given to theCollege by the Irish Parliament, which was increased by Peel in 1844 to£26, 000 a year. When in the following year he brought in a Bill to makeit a vote of, £30, 000 for building purposes, the _Times_, according toGreville, "kept pegging away at Peel in a series of articles asmischievous as malignity could make them, and by far the mostdisgraceful that have ever appeared on a political subject in any publicjournal. "

That on the purely financial side the Catholic Church in Ireland wouldhave gained by concurrent endowment these figures, which represent thewhole of her receipts from public funds, amply bear witness, but thatshe gained in a moral sense far more than in a material sense she mighthave secured, no one will for one moment deny. 

The glaring discrepancy between the amount of public funds at herdisposal and the amount held by the other religious bodies from publicsources did not abate the virulence with which the Church Act wasassailed, but at this day what is of interest is that the jeremiads ofthe Protestants as to the consequences either to the country at large orto their Church in particular were in every respect uncalled for, as wasacknowledged by no less a person than Lord Plunket, at a later timeArchbishop of Dublin, who, when in that position, admitted that theChurch Act had proved not a curse, as was expected, but a blessing tothe Episcopalian Protestant Church. This body has at the present momentin Ireland 1, 500 churches, to which 1, 600 clergy minister, and as thepopulation of that sect amounts to very little more than half a millionit appears that there is one parson for every 363 parishioners, 800Presbyterian ministers serve nearly a half million of people in theproportion of one for every 554 of that communion. 250 Methodistministers are sufficient for 62, 000 people in the ratio of one for every248, and the 3, 711 Catholic priests, who serve nearly four million ofsouls, are in the proportion of one for every 891, while in England thepriests of the same communion amount to one for every 542. These figuresshow the measure of truth in the alleged swamping of Ireland withpriests. In proportion to the number of their flocks all the otherdenominations have a much larger relative number of clergy in thecountry, and until the very much more flagrant drainage due toemigration has ceased, it is to be hoped that we shall hear a good dealless about the danger in an increase of celibates in Ireland, adanger--if it be one--which after all she shares with every otherCatholic country in the world. The alleged extortion of money by theclergy from a poverty-stricken peasantry is scarcely borne out by theevidence before the Royal Commission on the Financial Relations, inwhich Dr. O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe, calculated that the averagecontribution to the clergy in the West of Ireland, includingsubscriptions for the building and maintenance of churches, is 6s. Or7s. A year per family. 

That strange accusation of Sir Horace Plunkett, that "the clergy aretaking the joy--the innocent joy--from the social side of the homelife, " was, I think, sufficiently answered by the apposite reply of M. Paul-Dubois, that this is a strange reproach in the mouth of aProtestant who has undergone the experience of spending a Sunday inBelfast. The truth is that attacks on the Irish priesthood came ill fromEnglishmen or Anglo-Irishmen who have found in the Catholic Church themost powerful agent of social peace in the country. That Irishmen haveon this ground any reason to blame the priesthood for lack of patriotismI as strongly deny, for though one may not think necessarily that God ison the side of the big battalions, armed resistance, which from thenature of things must be borne down by sheer force of weight, is asinsensate as it is destructive. 

The figure of Father O'Flynn, drawn by the son of a bishop of theProtestant Church, professes to be as much a picture of a type as theFrench _curé_ whom Mr. Austin Dobson has so gracefully depicted, and itis difficult to see how such a figure of genial kindliness could havebeen portrayed in such a quarter or have received such generalacceptance if there were to be found in any number worth considering thehard and worldly beggars on horseback whom their enemies allegeconstitute the characteristic type of the Irish clergy. 

If in the religious nature of the Irish people is to be found one reasonfor the influence of the clergy in secular matters, a far more potentfactor is to be seen in the historical fact that the priest has forcenturies been the only guide, counsellor, and friend of the Irishpeasant. The absence of a well-educated middle class, which, failing asympathetic aristocracy, would, in a normal condition of things, providepopular leaders, is the only thing which has maintained any such unduepredominance on the part of the clergy in secular affairs as exists. With the development of an educated Catholic laity, among some membersof which one may expect to see evolved that critical acumen and balancedjudgment which are what the fine flower of a university culture issupposed to produce, this preponderance will disappear, but in themeanwhile, be it noted, it is the refusal of Englishmen to found anacceptable university which is maintaining the very state of affairs inthis direction against which they protest. 

CHAPTER VI

THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM

 "When I consider how munificently the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are endowed ... When I remember from whom all this splendour and plenty is derived; when I remember what was the faith of Edward the Third, and of Henry the Sixth, of Margaret of Anjou, and Margaret of Richmond, of William of Wykeham, and of William of Waynefleet, of Archbishop Chicheley, and Cardinal Wolsey; when I remember what we have taken from the Roman Catholics, King's College, New College, Christ Church, my own Trinity; and when I look at the miserable Dotheboys Hall which we have given them in exchange, I feel, I must own, less proud than I could wish of being a Protestant and a Cambridge man. "--T. B. MACAULAY, Speech on the Maynooth Grant, 1845. 

 "What the Irish are proposing is nothing so enormous or chimerical. They propose merely to put an end to one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy, the result that they--the immense majority of the Irish people--have no University, while the Protestants in Ireland, the small minority, have one. For this plain hardship they propose a plain remedy, and to their proposal they want a plain, straightforward answer. "--MATTHEW ARNOLD, _Mixed Essays_, 1880. 

The fact that the recurrent educational problem in England is that ofthe Elementary Schools, while as to Ireland the only question which isever to any extent ventilated is that of University Education, has ledto the totally wrong impression that everything in this sphere inIreland, with the exception of Higher Education, is in a satisfactorycondition. Nothing, in point of fact, could be further from the truth, and perhaps the strongest indictment against the present Executivesystem in the country is to be found in the chaos which exists ineducational matters. 

The National system of Education in Ireland was started by Lord Stanleyin 1833. Up to that date there had been no organised education in thecountry, and in fact there were still many living who could recall thetime when for a Catholic to receive education from his co-religionistswas a penal offence, involving legal and equitable disabilities. 

The main vehicles of elementary education up to this date were theCharter Schools and the Kildare Street Schools. The former, which werefounded about 1730 by Primate Boulter, and lasted a hundred years, werefrankly proselytising agencies--the address for the charter to the Crownspecifically setting out that it was a society for teaching theProtestant religion to Papist children. John Howard, the philanthropist, condemned them as a disgrace to Protestantism and a disgrace to allsociety, but for all that, in the course of their career, they cost thepublic nearly two millions of money. The Kildare Street Schools, whichwere founded in 1811, and which secured a Government grant for the firsttime in 1814, professed to be non-sectarian, and so long as they kept totheir professions were successful, but their subsequent association withproselytising agencies, such as the Hibernian Society, was their ruin, and in 1831 the public grant was withdrawn from them by the ChiefSecretary, who two years later introduced the National System. 

On the establishment of the National Board all creeds and parties inIreland were anxious that the basis of the system should bedenominational, but in the teeth of this unanimity the principle adoptedwas that of united secular and separate religious instruction. 

One would have thought that on the establishment of the National Systemthe danger of its capture by the Protestant ascendancy, which was veryobviously anxious to secure its control, would have ensured theinsistence on safeguards for the rights of the weaker section of thecommunity at a time when no longer held good that _obiter dictum_pronounced from the Bench in 1758, which was equally true for many yearsafter, that "the law does not suppose a Papist to exist in the kingdom, nor can they breathe without the connivance of the Government. " On itsformation the National Board included among its members Dr. Murray, theCatholic Archbishop of Dublin; Dr. Whately, the Protestant Archbishop ofthat city; and Dr. Carlisle, a Presbyterian Minister. No attempt wasmade to effect anything approaching a proportional representation of thecreeds concerned, and the two Catholic members were outvoted by theirfive Protestant colleagues on the Board for the control of the educationof the children of a population in which Catholics were to Protestantsin the ratio of about 4 to 1. 

The English Archbishop and the Scottish Presbyterian, in whom power wasin this way placed, set themselves by their regulations to effect theAnglicising of the Irish children in the schools of the country. The useof the English language was enforced for the education of children, thousands of whom spoke Gaelic, and though this may possibly bejustified on grounds of its greater use in the transactions of everydaylife, the same cannot be said of the manner in which the history booksemployed were of a kind in which the subjection of Ireland by Elizabeth, James I. , and William of Orange were extolled, as was also the defectionfrom Rome of England in the sixteenth century. 

Whately's policy was avowedly to Anglicise the children in the schools, to effect the "consolidation, " as he called it, of Great Britain andIreland, and in a reading book produced under his auspices occur thefollowing lines, written with that aim in view:--"On the east of Irelandis England, where the Queen lives. Many people who live in Ireland wereborn in England, and we speak the same language, and are called onenation. "

From the reading-books as first published were expunged such verses asCampbell's "Downfall of Roland" and Scott's "Breathes There a Man with aSoul so Dead, " owing to their tendency, one must suppose, to suggestemotions other than those which it was deemed fitting to inculcate, andin their place was inserted a verse from the Archbishop's own pen whichis familiar to most Irishmen, but which is, I find, unknown to mostEnglishmen:--

 "I thank the goodness and the grace which on my birth have smiled, And made me in these Christian days a happy English child. "

To appreciate fully the irony of the divergence between the sentimentsexpressed and the real facts, one must remember that these lines werewritten at a time when land reform and church disestablishment wereregarded by those in authority as the proposals of unspeakabledemagogues. 

The views of Whately on the value of the educational machine which hecontrolled, as an instrument of proselytism are very frankly set out ina conversation which he had with Nassau Senior, which is quoted from thediary of the latter in the Archbishop's biography:--

"I believe, " he said, "that mixed education is gradually enlighteningthe mass of the people, and that if we give it up we give up the onlyhope of weaning the Irish from the abuses of Popery. But I cannotventure openly to profess this opinion. I cannot openly support theEducation Board as an instrument of conversion. I have to fight itsbattles with one hand, and that my best, tied behind me. "[20]

This extract more than justifies the policy by which, when Dr. MacHalesucceeded Dr. Murray in Dublin, a bland acquiescence in Governmentalaction began to be no longer the line of action of Catholic prelates. 

The system of National Education was, as I have said, founded at itsinception on the principles of undenominationalism, but, as a matter offact, the determined views of all creeds in Ireland prevailed to a verygreat extent, so that at the end of the nineteenth century out of atotal of 8, 700 schools in the country more than 5, 000 were attended bychildren of one religion only; of these 4, 000 were Catholic schools, theremaining 1, 000 belonging to one or other of the Protestantdenominations. Of the 3, 700 schools which are not purely denominational, there are many in which the great majority of the pupils belong to onereligion, but in these, of course, the minority is safeguarded by aconscience clause. 

The members of the National Board are appointed to-day--as they were in1833--by Dublin Castle. They are nominees in no sense responsible toanyone, amateurs in educational matters, whose debates are carried on_in camera_, and when they have arrived at decisions their fiat goesforth without reason being given for changes of system or of policy, andwithout opportunity being afforded for revision or appeal. 

In these circumstances it is not surprising that the system ofelementary education in Ireland does not meet with the popular attentionthat it should. There is no consultation on the part of the Board withthose responsible for carrying on changes which it orders, and wheninnovations are introduced without reasons being offered, those who haveto apply them are not likely to do so with good grace, still less withenthusiasm. When the arguments and reasons in favour of alterations areunknown to the public such changes almost invariably meet withopposition at the hands of those who have to effect them. 

The multiplication of schools arising partly from the denominationalismwhich so largely holds the field is accentuated by the financial systemwhich is adopted by the National Board. In all the schools under itscontrol, with the exception of the 300 convent and monastery schools, where the State-aid takes the form of a capitation grant, the grant isear-marked for the payment of teachers' salaries, the largest chargeincurred by the school; and in this way the responsibility on thataccount and the occasion for economy on that score of the managers isremoved, leaving to them only the control of the school buildings. Moreover, the non-application of the capitation system of grants failsto bring into play what would be a direct financial inducement to thelocality to improve the school attendance of the children, as would alsoany system of local control. The small size of existing school areasresults in inevitable mischief, for under it the poorest districts arethose in which the school accommodation is worst, and since more moneyhas to be raised than in richer localities the poorer districts have topay most and the richest least for elementary education. 

A primary effect of the larger number of schools is that the averageattendance is much smaller than in Scotland, where conditions are inmany respects similar, and side by side with the small size of theschools goes the very low standard of salaries paid to the teachers, which begin at £56 a year for men and £44 each for women, and advance bytriennial increments to £172 for men and £140 for women. Two-thirds ofthe primary school teachers of Ireland have a salary of less than 30s. Aweek. The average payment to head teachers is in Scotland 75 per cent. And in England 48 per cent. Higher than in Ireland. The general state ofinefficiency of education in Ireland may be gathered from the fact thatthe Census of 1901 showed that of persons over five years of age no lessthan 13. 7 per cent. Could neither read nor write, the percentage ofilliteracy being in the four provinces, 11. 3 in Leinster, 12. 5 inUlster, 14 in Munster, and 20. 7 in Connaught. The children in Scottishschools attend on 85 per cent. Of the days on which the schools areopen, in English on 84 per cent. , and in Irish schools only on 65 percent. ; but in considering these figures allowance must be made for thefact that school attendance in Great Britain has been compulsory forjust over thirty years, while in Ireland it was only in 1892 that an Actwas passed sanctioning the formation of School Attendance Committeeswith power to enforce the attendance of children at school. 

In addition to the Board of National Education there are in Dublin theIntermediate Board, the Commissioners of Education, who deal with thefew Educational endowments in the country, the Department of Agricultureand Technical Instruction, the Senate of the Royal University, the LocalGovernment Board attending to the education of children in work-houses, industrial, and reformatory schools, all concerned with primary andsecondary education in its administrative aspect, while the Board ofWorks is occupied with the erection of school buildings. Theextravagance and inefficiency which results from this diffusion andconsequent overlapping of power and duties on the part of officialsscattered about in Tyrone House, in Hume Street, in Merrion Place, andthree or four other parts of Dublin, is well illustrated by the factthat out of every 20s. Given as Exchequer aid to education--

 In England and Wales 17/- goes to Education and 3/- to Administration and Inspection. 

 In Scotland 16/2 goes to Education and 3/10 to Administration and Inspection. 

 In Ireland 13/6 goes to Education and 6/6 to Administration and Inspection. 

Administrative extravagance, it will be seen, is in inverse ratio to thequality of the educational service. If we take the three Irish Boards ofNational, Intermediate, and Technical Education, the total cost ofadministration and inspection is £120, 000 per annum; the similar chargeon Scotland is exactly half that sum, and yet Scotland prides herself onher education, and Ireland is taunted with her illiteracy. 

The state of secondary education in Ireland differs fundamentally fromthat of England in this--that the number of educational endowments inthe country are extremely few. Practically the whole of the money spenton this branch of education comes from taxation and school fees. It iscontrolled by the Intermediate Board, which was established some thirtyyears ago, and is in its management entirely dissociated from theNational Board, so that all arrangements with a view to the transfer ofclever pupils from the schools of the one type to those of the other aremade as difficult as possible. 

The Intermediate schools are, on the other hand, subject to theDepartment of Technical Instruction as well as to the IntermediateBoard. Each of these awards grants, in some instances, for the samesubjects, but dependent in many cases on different standards andconditions, so that it sometimes happens that schools earn grants twiceover for the same subjects; and in other cases they enjoy aid from oneDepartment of State which is refused for the same subject by another, owing to failure to comply with its conditions or to attain to itsstandard. Just as the connection of the Elementary schools with theIntermediate schools is very imperfect, so at the other end is theconnection with the universities. The system of payment by results, under which the Intermediate schools are subsidised, is notoriouslyunsound from the point of view of education, since it leads to"cramming, " and, moreover, under it the amount of grant earned by aschool is subject to extreme variations. Lastly, if the pupils sufferfrom existing arrangements, the case of the teachers is no better, forfrom a recent report it will be seen that the average salary of layteachers in Intermediate schools in Ireland is at least half what it isin corresponding schools in England. 

In a country where elementary and intermediate education are in sounsatisfactory condition as we have seen them to be, one would expectuniversity education to be seriously crippled, but in Ireland therearise in this connection further complications from religiousdifferences which serve to perpetuate a state of affairs which twentyyears ago Mr. Balfour declared was an intolerable grievance, and whichstill remains one of the chief disabilities of Ireland. There are at thepresent moment two universities in the country, but since one of theseis only an examining board let us begin by considering the status of theother. Trinity College, Dublin, was founded by Queen Elizabeth with theproceeds of confiscated Catholic lands, both monastic and lay, with theavowed intention of propagating the principles of the Protestantreligion. During Grattan's Parliament, at the end of the eighteenthcentury, it threw open its gates to others than members of theEstablished Church--an example which was not followed by Oxford andCambridge for three-quarters of a century. There could be no greatermistake than to imply from this that it thereby lost its strongsectarian character. After Mr. Gladstone's attempt in 1873 to solve theUniversity question had failed, Fawcett's Act removed the religioustests which barred not only Catholics but also Presbyterians from itsoffices and scholarships, and thereby made the College, in theory, undenominational. In point of fact it is little less Episcopalian thanit has ever been. Its chapel services are Protestant, as are also itsDivinity schools. Its governing body, comprising the Provost and sevenSenior Fellows, is entirely Protestant, while of the 4, 200 names on itselectoral roll 2, 600 are those of Protestant clergymen. 

Of other institutions affording opportunities for higher education inIreland, the three Queen's Colleges in Cork, Galway, and Belfast weredestined by their founder, Sir Robert Peel, who established them in1838, to supply the higher education which was lacking among theCatholics of the country. The Protestant "atmosphere" of Trinity beingthe great obstacle in the way of Catholics who wished for highereducation for their sons, it was thought that by removing this andsetting up undenominational colleges all would be well and the religiousdifficulty would be solved. It was as great a mistake as it was possibleto commit. They were stigmatised by a leading Protestant of the time asgodless colleges; they ran counter to all Catholic principles ofeducation, which demand at least some connection between secular andreligious teaching, and the taboo to which they have in large measurebeen subjected has to a great extent resulted in making a failure ofCork College, and still more of Galway College. The undenominationalismof Queen's College, Belfast, not being in opposition to the consciencesof the Presbyterians of that city, has resulted in the fact that theCollege there has succeeded to a far greater extent than have the othertwo. 

The Royal University, founded in 1882, is, as I have said, nothing morethan an examining body, established on the lines of the LondonUniversity as it existed at that date, with power to award scholarshipsand fellowships. About fifty years ago John Henry Newman founded theCatholic University in St. Stephen's Green. Unendowed and depending onthe voluntary contributions of the poorest people in Western Europe, itis not surprising that the venture failed. From it, however, rose theUniversity College, controlled by the Jesuit Fathers, which occupies thesame buildings, and the pupils of which compete for the degrees of theRoyal University as those of the Queen's Colleges have done ever since, on the foundation of the Royal University, the Queen's University--ofwhich the three colleges were components--was destroyed. The indirectmode in which the Catholic University College is endowed is worthy ofattention. The Royal University, out of its income from the Irish ChurchFund, maintains twenty-nine fellows, each with an income of £400 a yearon condition that they should act as examiners in the Royal University, and in addition give their services as teachers in colleges appointed bythe Senate (namely, the three Queen's Colleges, University College, Dublin, and the Magee College in Derry). Of these Fellows fifteen areallotted to University College. On the assumption that of their salaryone-quarter represents the payment as examiners to the University--andthe estimate is generous in view of the payment of only £30 to eachexaminer in the Cambridge Triposes--if this be assumed to be the case, the remaining £300 stands for the salary given as teacher in UniversityCollege, which thus, albeit indirectly, is endowed to the extent of£4, 500 a year--a fact which, though contrasting unfavourably with the£12, 000 or £13, 000 enjoyed by each of the Queen's Colleges, neverthelesswould have seemed to cut the ground from under the feet of those whoargued that the University question was insoluble since they would notcountenance the application of public funds to a sectarian college. 

It is often alleged that the anxiety of the Irish for other facilitiesfor higher education than are at present afforded arises from theirpriest-ridden condition, and that the clergy urge the demand only inorder that they may obtain more power than they already possess. Theconditions in University College are some answer to this charge. It is, as I have said, under the control of the Jesuits, and a very able memberof that Society is its President. Founded though it was for Catholics, the proportion--namely, about 10 per cent. --of non-Catholic students hasfor the last twenty years been greater than that of Catholics attendingQueen's College, Belfast. Of its professorial staff only five out oftwenty-one are priests. There have always been some Protestants amongthem, and on the governing council only one member is a priest, and ofthe five laymen one is a Protestant. 

The history of the University question in recent years is instructive. In 1868 Lord Mayo, the Chief Secretary, endeavoured without success toformulate a scheme. In 1873 Mr. Gladstone brought in a Bill which riskedthe life of his Government, and failed to pass. Three years later a Billof Isaac Butt's was introduced, but was unsuccessful, and after anotherthree years, in 1879, was established the federal Royal University. In1885 the Conservative Chief Secretary, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, expressed a hope on the part of the Government that in the followingsession they would be able to bring in a Bill in settlement of thequestion. The letter of Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord JusticeFitzGibbon, which has been quoted elsewhere, shows that at the end ofthe same year the Conservative Government was anxious to make an end ofthe matter by legislation. In 1889 Mr. Balfour, as Chief Secretary, ontwo occasions expressed in the House of Commons the intention of theGovernment to proceed to a solution, for the conditions in Ireland, hewent on to say, were "such as to leave them no alternative but to devisea scheme by which the wants of the Roman Catholics would be met. " Wehave seen in another connection the quotation from the Life of LordRandolph Churchill urging legislation in 1892, and in 1896 Lord Cadogan, as Viceroy, explicitly spoke of it as "a question with which the presentGovernment will have to deal. "

Eight years ago, in 1899, Mr. Balfour launched a manifesto on thisquestion which proposed the maintenance of Dublin University with itsEpiscopalian atmosphere, while a St. Patrick's University was to befounded in Dublin with a Catholic atmosphere, and a University ofBelfast with a Presbyterian atmosphere was to be founded on the basis ofthe existing Queen's College in that city. The reasons which Mr. Balfour gave for desiring a settlement of the question deservequotation:--

"For myself I hope a University will be granted, and I hope it will begranted soon. I hope so, as a Unionist, because otherwise I do not knowhow to claim for a British Parliament that it can do for Ireland all, and more than all, that Ireland could do for herself. I hope so as alover of education, because otherwise the educational interests both ofIrish Protestants and of Irish Roman Catholics must grievously suffer, and suffer in that department of education, the national importance ofwhich is from day to day more fully recognised. I hope so as aProtestant, because otherwise too easy an occasion is given for thetaunt that in the judgment of Protestants themselves Protestantism hassomething to fear from the spread of knowledge. "

Two years after this declaration a Royal Commission on the wholequestion was mooted, and immediately the cry of "Hands off Trinity" wasraised, in spite of the fact that no Royal Commission had sat on thatCollege since 1853, an interval of time in which there had been fourCommissions on Oxford and Cambridge, and three on the ScottishUniversities. The terms of reference of the Commission of 1901 on itsappointment under the chairmanship of Lord Robertson were vague. A Judgeof the High Court in Ireland threatened to resign if TrinityCollege--the main centre of University education in the island--wereincluded in the scope of the inquiry of a Commission on the means forobtaining such education in the country. The Commission sat in private, and it was not till the first volume of evidence was published that itwas discovered that the terms of reference had been so interpreted as toexclude Trinity from the inquiry, and to retain the services of thelearned Judge. 

After discussing the alternatives of a new Catholic University, or areconstitution of the Royal University with the addition of a newCatholic College, the Commissioners decided in favour of the latter. Their plan comprised a federal teaching University with four constituentColleges, the three Queen's Colleges and a new Catholic College to besituated in Dublin. Changes in the constitution of the Queen's Colleges, to remove the religious objections at present entertained towards themwere proposed, and in reference to the endowment of the new CatholicCollege it was claimed that it was not truly open to the objection thatit introduced denominational endowment into the University system ofIreland since the Jesuit University College receives, and has receivedfor nearly a quarter of a century, a large annual sum out of moneysprovided by Acts of Parliament for University purposes. The reason whichthe Commissioners gave fer not making this institution the basis of anew College was declared to be its meagre scale which makes itunsuitable for expansion. 

In January, 1904, Lord Dunraven propounded a scheme in a letter to thePress by which the question was to be solved by enlarging the Universityof Dublin so as to include the present Queen's College, Belfast, and anew College which should satisfy Catholic needs in Dublin, each of theColleges being autonomous and residential, and on August 3rd, 1904, Mr. Clancy, in the House of Commons, read a telegram from the Archbishop ofDublin saying that the bishops would accept either the Dunraven schemeor that of the Robertson Commission. 

So matters were allowed to rest until, with the advent to power of thepresent Government, the lacuna, which owing to the recalcitrancy of Mr. Justice Madden, had been left in the public information on the problemby the omission of Trinity from the Robertson report, was filled up bythe appointment of a new Royal Commission. 

Early this year their report was published. Five of the Commissionersare in favour of a modified Dunraven scheme, three follow the Robertsonscheme, and one--the only Catholic Fellow of Trinity, one of the veryfew of that faith who had ever been elected to that office--is in favourof no change, an opinion which he expounds in three lines. 

It must be remembered in connection with the minority recommendationthat the importance of its coincidence with that of the Robertson reportmay easily be exaggerated if sufficiently strong insistence be not laidupon the exclusion of the University of Dublin from the purview of thelatter. 

The chief respect in which the majority recommendations differ fromthose of Lord Dunraven is in the inclusion in the new federal DublinUniversity of the present Queen's College in Cork, and possibly of thatof Galway. It is important to study this proposal, because it is, according to Mr. Bryce's last words on resigning office, to be the meansby which the Government hope to effect a solution. 

The fact that both the Robertson and the Fry Commissions reportedagainst Mr. Balfour's plan, to the promotion of the success of which inthe eight years which have elapsed he has done nothing, on the groundsof the difficulty of bringing it into play, show that for the momentopinion is set against the multiplication of Universities, and thechoice for the present lies between the two methods of dealing with thetwo existing Universities, one of which does not teach, while to theother the students of the country cannot in conscience go to be taught. 

After Mr. Bryce's speech we can no longer ask British statesmen, "Howlong halt ye between two opinions?" That the plan adopted by theGovernment is the better of the two at present mooted I shall endeavourto show. In the first place, it is a mere accident that Trinity Collegehas continued so long the sole College in the University of Dublin, Chief Baron Palles, in a very able note appended to the report, disentangles from a number of legal decisions and statutory declarationsthe distinctions between Trinity College and the University of Dublinwhich it is endeavoured to confound. The Charter of James I. , conferringon Dublin the privilege of a University, foreshadowed the establishmentof other Colleges. Both the Act of Settlement, 14 & 15 Car. II. (1660), and the Roman Catholic Relief Act, 1793, expressly authorise theerection of another College in the University--a fact which makes theproposed change which partisans are anxious to paint as revolutionaryvandalism appear in truth merely the belated performance of along-expressed intention. The advantages to Trinity in making it a partof a great National University are hard to exaggerate. She has long beendescribed as the only successful British institution in Ireland, and inthat may perhaps be found the comparatively evil days on which she hasfallen, as her admission lists every year testify, and as was explainedto me recently by a member of the very class from which she used to drawher undergraduates, when he said--"The respectable Protestant countrygentry don't send their sons to Trinity now in the numbers in which theyused to. They send them to Oxford and Cambridge. " The last part of hisremark I was able to indorse from my own personal observation. 

On two occasions advances have been made by the Board of Trinity Collegeto the heads of the Catholic hierarchy, asking them what would be theirattitude if Trinity were to allow Catholic students in the College thesame facilities for religious teaching by the members of their ownChurch as are at present provided for undergraduate members of theEpiscopalian Protestant Church. On the first occasion Cardinal Cullen, shortly after the passing of the University Tests Act, replied that hecould be no party to such a proposal. When the process of sounding theCatholic bishops was repeated in November, 1903, the Provost and SeniorFellows expressed their willingness to consent to the erection of aCatholic chapel in the College grounds provided a sufficient sum ofmoney was forthcoming for its erection. A similar advance was made tothe Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, andthe reply in each case was the same--that the parties concerned couldnot accept the offers made by the College Board. The failure on the partof Presbyterians to make use of the College has been attributed by theCommissioners to the ancient alienation of the Presbyterians fromTrinity, as well as to the existence of the useful work done for thatbody by the Queen's College, Belfast. That this ancient alienationexists in the case of Catholics far more than in that of thePresbyterians is but natural, seeing that the College was founded byElizabeth to undermine the Catholicism of the people. For all that, however, the taunt is raised with some superficial measure ofplausibility that in refusing the offer the Catholics and their bishopslay themselves open to a charge of narrowmindedness, seeing that theyhave not a College suitable to their needs as have the Presbyterians inBelfast. That the _genius loci_ is Episcopalian Protestant no one willdeny. At an inaugural meeting of the College Historical Society a fewyears ago Judge Webb declared--"Their University was founded byProtestants, for Protestants, and in the Protestant interest. AProtestant spirit had from the first animated every member of its bodycorporate. At the present moment, with all its toleration, all itsliberality, all its comprehensiveness, and all its scrupulous honour, the _genius loci_, the guardian spirit of the place, was Protestant. Andas a Protestant he said, and said it boldly, Protestant might itevermore remain. " To this exposition of the spirit of the College two ofits most distinguished members--Lord Justice FitzGibbon and ProfessorMahaffy--gave their assent. 

In the light of this frank admission the attitude of the Catholicstakes a new complexion. No suggestion, it will be noted, is made in theovertures to the bishops to give Catholics any--not to speak of aproportionate--representation on the Councils of the College. As atpresent constituted, the Board, owing to the abolition of celibacy as acondition of Fellowship and the extinction of the advowsons belonging tothe College by the Irish Church Act of 1869, has become a body of men, the average age of whom is over seventy and the average time since thegraduation of whom is a little more than half a century. There is atpresent one Catholic Junior Fellow in the College, and from the abovefacts it will be seen that he may get on the governing board, if hesurvives, in about forty years from now. 

The government in a college by men whose undergraduate days were fiftyyears ago is not calculated to inspire hope for a liberality oftreatment with which a more modern generation might be imbued. Thesuggestion that Catholics show narrowmindedness in refusing to throngthe halls of a College admittedly envious of its Protestantism andmaintaining automatically its purely Protestant government forthree-quarters of a century more is very disingenuous. 

That if they were to comply, Protestantism would have by some specialmeans to maintain its supremacy is obvious, for the EpiscopalianProtestants are only thirteen per cent. Of the population of Ireland, and if Catholics were to swamp Trinity and to succeed in obtaining ashare in its councils proportionate to their numbers in the country, thebody for which Trinity was founded would find themselves unable toobtain any dominant voice in its government. 

"Trinity College is quite free from clerical control, " said theVice-Provost in his statement to the Commissioners, regardlessapparently of the fact that of the seven Senior Fellows who, togetherwith the Provost, form the College Board, no less than four areclergymen. In this connection I cannot do better than quote from thestatement submitted by the Committee on Higher Education of the GeneralAssembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland for the information ofthe last Royal Commission:--

"So long as Trinity College remains practically as it is there is a realgrievance for all denominations except the Protestant Episcopalian, andthe members of those denominations will still be able to say that thebest education in the country--and whether it is the best academicallyor simply possesses a greater social acceptance and prestige it isneedless here to discuss--is withheld from them, except on conditionsthat tempt their sons to abandon the faith of their fathers or to becomeweakened in their attachment to it. "

No one--least of all an Irishman--can deny the greatness of a College onthe boards of which are such names as Berkeley, Swift, Grattan, Flood, and Burke, but it will be admitted by all that as far as the fame of her_alumni_ is concerned--and there is no other test for a collegiatefoundation--Trinity reached the zenith of her greatness during the yearsin which a free Parliament served to break down the barriers of religionin the island. With the passing of that phase of political history sherelapsed into her place as the "silent sister" in the country, but notof it, taking no part in national life other than to offer opposition tothe legislative changes, which even she is now constrained to admit werereforms. 

As owner of some 200, 000 acres, Trinity College has proved herself oneof the worst landlords in Ireland. An estate belonging to the College inCounty Kerry gave rise to one of the bitterest struggles of the landwar. In view of the cry which is being raised in England to-day as tothe broad tolerance which is alleged to hold the field in the Collegeto-day, the bitterly anti-Catholic spirit of the present Provost and ofhis predecessors deserves mention; but I must further call the reader'snotice to a recent event which attracted much attention in Ireland, butwas passed unnoticed in Great Britain. In a sonnet, written by a leadingFellow of the College in "T. C. D. , " the College magazine, the writerspoke of the Catholic churches in Ireland as "grim monuments of coldobservance, the incestuous mate of superstition, " of which "to seeingeyes each tall steeple lifts its tall head and lies. " Sentiments of thiskind, expressed in such taste, are not calculated to encourage Catholicparents to send their sons to a college where they may come underinfluences of which the writer is an example. 

The idea of putting into practice the proposed expedient of swampingTrinity by the encouragement of all Catholics to send their sons to thatCollege is to a member of an old university as attractive as on paper itappears easy, but there are drawbacks to its practical application otherthan the presence in the College of such a spirit as I have exemplified. 

In England, where there are public schools, and Oxford and Cambridgecolleges, many of which have behind them a career of three or fourhundred years, one is inclined to overestimate the value of tradition ina country where educational endowments are rare and ancient endowmentsare the exception. The traditions, moreover, of the origin and of themission of Trinity are not such as to foster for her the same feelingsas Oxford and Cambridge have the power of provoking in England. The partwhich Trinity has played in Irish history is in no sense analogous tothat played by the English Universities in the history of that country. English Catholics make use of Oxford and Cambridge for the education oftheir sons because in view of their numbers the notion of a separateuniversity or even a separate college would be ridiculous. In EnglandCatholics are a small sect. In Ireland they form the great bulk of thenation. In Montreal, where Catholics form only forty per cent. Of thepopulation, a Catholic University was established by Royal Charter, andthe same principle has been applied in the establishment of CatholicUniversities in Nova Scotia, in Malta, in New South Wales, and in thefounding of the Mahommedan Gordon College at Khartoum. 

As long as Trinity maintained tests, so long did the Catholics demand asof right a purely Catholic University on the grounds of civic equity, but in these days of open doors they have again and again expressedtheir demand for a college or university open to men of allcreeds--Catholic in the sense that Oxford and Cambridge are Protestant, and are in consequence thronged with young Englishmen; Catholic in theway that the Scottish Universities are Presbyterian and that Trinity, Dublin, is Episcopalian. Not a rich man's college, but one to which allmay go as they do to those in Scotland and like those racy of the soil, and for the rest, in Cardinal Newman's words--"Not a seminary, not aconvent, but a place where men of the world may be fitted for theworld. "

Everyone recognises to-day the grievance of the Dissenters in Englandand Wales in single school areas under the Education Act of 1902. Ireland may not unjustly be said to be a single university area, for tocall an examining Board a university is a misnomer. It is surely not toomuch to assert that the conscientious scruples of the Irish Catholics toforms of education of which they do not approve are as strong as thefeelings of the Non-conformist conscience. The attempt to forceundenominationalism on the country has been an expensive failure. Recognising this, the denominational--nay, more, the Jesuit--UniversityCollege has in a niggardly fashion and by a back door been subsidised bythe State. The demand is for no more than a university which shall beCatholic in the sense that it shall be national, and this in apreponderatingly Catholic country implies Catholicism. The IrishCatholic bishops in 1897 declared they are prepared to accept auniversity without tests in which the majority of the governing bodyare laymen, with a provision that no State funds should be employed forthe promotion of religious education. It is idle, in view of this, toprotest that the demand is urged only on behalf of rampant clericalism, and that the only form of university which Catholics will accept is ofsuch a kind as would serve to strengthen the hand of the priests, whosesole aim in this demand is to secure that increase of power. The shiftsof intolerance are many, but I cannot believe that it will long continueto masquerade in this manner as the statesmanlike buffer between apriest-ridden country and an aggressive clergy. Granting, for the sakeof argument, that this was the case, one would have thought that awell-educated laity was better able than one without education towithstand the encroaches of clericalism. We do not ask for adenominational college, but remember that the only colleges, Keble andSelwyn, founded in Oxford and Cambridge in the last eighty years arepurely denominational. In the last forty years six new universities havebeen founded in England, and the number of university students has risenfrom 2, 300 to 13, 000. In Ireland, on the other hand, for three-fourthsof the population knowledge must still remain a fountain sealed; it isas though one were applying literally to that country the text--"He thatincreaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. "

In connection with what one may call the Bryce scheme it may be well topoint out that as long ago as 1871 the hierarchy proposed a solution onthe same lines. In a Pastoral letter of that year, after insisting onthe principle of equality, the following passage occurred--"All thiscan, we believe, be attained by modifying the constitution of theUniversity of Dublin, so as to admit the establishment of a secondCollege within it, in every respect equal to Trinity College, andconducted on purely Catholic principles. "

On the motion to go into Committee on the Bill for the abolition oftests in 1873 an Irish member moved a motion to the effect that aCatholic College should be founded in the University of Dublin, inaddition to Trinity College. Two years later Mr. Isaac Butt, theProtestant leader of the Irish Nationalists (himself a Trinity man), andThe O'Conor Don, a Catholic Unionist, brought in a Bill on the samelines, but both motion and Bill were defeated. The advantages of thismode of dealing with the question are seen from its acceptance by thehierarchy and the general mass of the Catholic laity. The Senate of theRoyal University have since its promulgation readily recognised itssoundness and have given it their support, as have the Professors ofUniversity College, Dublin. It will serve to make an end of theunderhand manner by which, as we have seen, that College, though notmerely a denominational, but, moreover, a Jesuit institution, issubsidised by public money, though we are always told that Stateendowment of religious education is alien to all modern principles ofgovernment. 

One would have thought that the authorities of Trinity would have feltthemselves estopped from refusing to accept this solution. The offer offacilities inside Trinity itself--if it is the generous concession itprofesses to be--must be made with a full recognition that, if accepted, the process of "capturing" the College would be effected before long, thus modifying the Protestantism which is its proudest boast. If, on theother hand, the expense of life in Trinity College would proveprohibitive to any but a small section of the four thousand matriculatedstudents in the Royal University, the much-vaunted liberality of Trinityis seen to be very greatly restricted, since the results of acceptanceof the offer would only touch the mere fringe of the educational demand. 

Last year, of the 1, 114 students on the books of the College only 261were resident within the College--there being accommodation for only275. Of the 853 returned as residing outside the College, more than ahundred do not attend lectures or classes, and are entitled to callthemselves members of the College though their only connection with itis in the examination hall--an evil system which the Commission hascondemned, and which one must suppose was borrowed from the RoyalUniversity. 

Everyone is agreed that a university to be worth the name should, ifpossible, be residential. The absence of disciplinary control in Trinityon those residing out of College, the omission on the part of theauthorities to enact rules which would allow terms to be kept only inlicensed lodging-houses, subject to inspection and to a rigid "lock-uprule" at twelve o'clock, are absent in Dublin not only at Trinity, butat the University College, where one can only suppose its absence to bedue to the unorganised condition of a small and temporary makeshift. Notonly, however, for the exercise of disciplinary control, but alsobecause of the close association of men with each other which residenceensures, is this to be regarded as the best means of getting the heartout of a university education. 

This being the case, if Trinity were to receive a new accession ofnumbers its accommodation would have to be largely increased, so thatthe line of least resistance, which leaves the very largely autonomousconstitution of Trinity unimpaired, will be seen to lie in the directionof the establishment of a new college, in which, moreover, it will bepossible to make expenses more economical than they are in Trinity. 

"It is not for us, " said Mr. Balfour at Partick in December, 1889, "toconsider how far the undoubtedly conscientious objections of the RomanCatholic population to use the means at their disposal are wise orunwise. That is not our business. What we have to do is to consider whatwe can do consistently with our conscience to meet their wants. "

The proposals of the Government, as outlined by Mr. Bryce andrecommended by the Royal Commission, offend against no one's conscience. They assail no vested interest unless one so calls that of which MatthewArnold spoke as one very cruel result of the Protestant ascendancy; theytend to establish something approaching equality between creeds; theymake an end of the mischievous system by which the Royal University hasencouraged a false ideal of success by making examination the end-alland the be-all of a so-called university education, and which, moreover, according to the final report of the Robertson Commission, "fails toexhibit the one virtue which is associated with a university of thiskind--that of inspiring public confidence in its examination results. "The advantages of the present proposal over a reorganised RoyalUniversity are that the size and poverty of the country are strongreasons against the creation of two universities when one would beequally efficient. The scheme will be readily accepted by thePresbyterians as well as by the Catholics, which would not be the casewith a reconstituted Royal University, and it is the only solution ofthe question which will bring the young men of different creeds in thecountry together at an impressionable age when friendships are formedwhich may serve to break down the barrier between creeds. 

The objection of Trinity College to the inclusion on the roll of theUniversity under the new conditions of the present M. A. S of the RoyalUniversity is scarcely consistent with its recent action in admitting to_ad eundem_ degrees women who have passed the final degree examinationsat Oxford and Cambridge, and if the objection to the proposal is basedon the change in political complexion which the electoral roll of theUniversity would undergo, the answer is that University representationis an anomaly which in any circumstances is not likely to continue formany years more in the case, not merely of Dublin, but of the otheruniversities of the three kingdoms. 

 * * * * *

Since the foregoing chapter was written the Provost of Trinity hasannounced to a meeting of Graduates of the College that he has receivedassurances from the Chief Secretary that in the forthcoming Bill theUniversity of Dublin will be left untouched. I have said enough to showthat Irish Nationalist opinion has not been committed to the Brycescheme to the exclusion of every other solution, but it is to beregretted, in the interests of education, that the proposal which themajority of Irishmen regarded as the solution nearest approaching theideal should have been launched by the Government merely as a _ballond'essai_, to be withdrawn at the first breath of opposition, and to bereplaced by what, at the best, can only prove to be a less hopefulcompromise. One guarantee of a speedy solution the country at any rateholds--namely, that the Government is pledged to introduce legislationnext session, and that the Chief Secretary has bound himself to stand orfall by the fate of the Bill. 

CHAPTER VII

UNIONISM IN IRELAND

 "When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool. There are always a set of worthy and moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires ... I admit that to a certain extent the Government will lose the affections of the Orangemen ... But you must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy than four enemies and one friend. "

 --SYDNEY SMITH, _Letters of Peter Plymley_, 1807. 

From the outcry which arose in the last years of the late Government atthe revelations which came to be known as the MacDonnell mystery onewould have thought that Conservatives could look back to a recordunstained by any traffic with the unclean thing for which they expresssuch horror. I will try to show how small is the measure of truth inthis belief, and in what manner it has proved impossible to maintain the_status quo_ in the teeth of democratic feeling without _pourparlers_behind the scenes, even when in the open such dealings have had perforceto be denounced as impossible. 

Twenty-five years ago the rigid application of the Crimes Act by LordSpencer, the Viceroy, after the Phoenix Park murders had put an end tothe "Kilmainham Treaty, " and the failure on the part of the Governmentto amend the Land Act of 1881, together with the sympathetic attitude ofLord Randolph Churchill, then conducting his guerilla tactics as leaderof the Fourth Party, all served to make opposition on the part of theIrish members to the Liberal Government increase, and it was by theiraid that in June, 1885, it was thrown out of office on a defeat bytwelve votes on the Budget. Lord Salisbury then took office with his"ministry of care-takers, " with a minority in the House of Commons, fora general election could not take place until the provisions of the newFranchise Act had come into force. 

Colour was lent to the general impression which was abroad that theConservatives were flirting with Home Rule by the appointment to theLord Lieutenancy with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord Carnarvon, thestatesman who had established federation in Canada and had attempted tobring it about in South Africa, who was familiar with the machinery ofsubordinate legislatures and Colonial parliaments, and whose sympathieswith the Irish people were to be inferred from the fact that he hadvoted for Disestablishment in 1869, and for the Land Bill of thefollowing year, in a speech on which measure he had urged the House ofLords not to delay concession till it could no longer have the charm offree consent, nor be regulated by the counsels of prudent statesmanship. 

The defeat of the Liberals had been primarily due to the revolt on thepart of the radical section over the question of whether a new CoercionBill should be introduced. In the light of this fact special importancewas attached to the declaration, made in the House of Lords, as to theIrish policy of the Government, the more so because in an unprecedentedmanner not the Premier but the Viceroy was the spokesman. He began by arepudiation of coercion, with which he declared the recentenfranchisement of the Irish people would not be consistent. "My Lords, "he went on to say, speaking of the general question, "I do not believethat with honesty and singlemindedness of purpose on the one side, andwith the willingness of the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless tolook for some satisfactory solution of this terrible question. MyLords, these I believe to be the opinions and views of my colleagues. "

A further step in securing Irish support occurred at the end of July, and perhaps of all the strange events which have occurred in thegovernment of Ireland it is the strangest. Lord Carnarvon solicitedthrough one of his colleagues, and obtained, an interview with Mr. Parnell, and the circumstances under which this occurred between theQueen's Lord Lieutenant and the leader to whom men attributed treasonand condoning assassinations is perhaps the most curious part of thewhole story. 

The meeting took place at the very end of the London season, not in theHouses of Parliament nor in a club of which one or other of the partieswas a member, but in an empty house in Grosvenor Square, from which allthe servants had gone away. It is a piquant feature of the event, shrouded as it was with all these circumstances of mystery, that thegentleman who was in the secret and offered his house for the meetingwas no other than that rigid Imperialist, Col. Sir Howard Vincent, whohad only the year before retired from the Criminal InvestigationDepartment at Scotland Yard. When the occurrence of this interviewbecame known, nearly a year later, Mr. Parnell declared--and the factwas never denied by Lord Carnarvon--that the latter had pronouncedhimself in favour of an Irish Parliament with the power of protectingIrish industries. The insistence by the Viceroy that he spoke only forhimself appeared to the Irish leader to be mere formality, but in truththe Cabinet knew nothing of the interview. Lord Salisbury was informedthat it was going to take place, raised no objection to its occurrence, and on receiving afterwards, both _verbatim_ and in writing, accounts ofwhat had occurred, praised the discretion of his Viceroy. 

In view of what had happened it was not surprising that in the month ofAugust Mr. Parnell made an explicit demand for the restoration ofGrattan's Parliament, with the right of taxing foreign and even Englishimports for the benefit of the Irish home trade--a proposal not sorevolutionary as it would now appear, seeing that less than forty yearshad elapsed since the Irish Custom House had for the first time begun toadmit all English goods duty free. 

Mr. Parnell's manifesto was followed by Lord Salisbury's speech atNewport, from which quotation has already been made, in which heexpressed himself of opinion that Home Rule would be safer than popularlocal government, and further enhanced the impression that he was movingin the direction of the safer policy, by proceeding to frame what hasbeen described as the nearest approach to an apologia for boycottingwhich has ever been made by an English statesman. The election addressof Lord Randolph Churchill--the most popular and influential minister inthe country--contained no allusion to the threatened "dismemberment ofthe Empire, " and in his campaign his only allusion to Ireland wascomprised in boasts of the success of the anti-coercion policy ofCarnarvon; while Sir John Gorst, who had been Solicitor-General, referred in his election address in disparaging terms to "thereactionary Ulster members. " All the symptoms pointed in the onedirection of an alliance between Salisbury and Parnell on the basis of ascheme for self-government, and an additional point was given to theindications in that direction by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain and LordHartington, at variance on most points of policy, were united inopposition to Mr. Parnell's demand. 

The statesmanlike manner in which at this juncture Mr. Gladstoneendeavoured, as he himself put it, to keep the strife of nations fromforming the dividing line between parties, has become very apparent withthe recent publication of documents of the period. Two years before, hehad told the Queen that the Irish question could only be settled by aconjunction of parties, and on December 20th, 1885, he wrote to theConservative leader on the urgency of the Irish question, and declaredthat it would be a public calamity if this great subject should fallinto lines of party conflict. If Salisbury would bring forward aproposal for settling the whole question of future government in Irelandhe would treat it in the same spirit as that which he had shown in thematters of Afghanistan and the Balkans, and he illustrated theadvantages which such a spirit of concession could produce by theconferences on the Reform Bill, and the fact that the existingConservative ministry had been maintained in office by Liberalforbearance. "His hypocrisy, " wrote a minister to whom this letter hadbeen shown, "makes me sick. " In this connection a letter from LordRandolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, written on the following day, isof interest:--

"Labouchere came to see me this morning.... He proceeded to tell methat, on Sunday week last, Lord Carnarvon had met Justin MacCarthy andhad confided to him that he was in favour of Home Rule in some shape, but that his colleagues and his party were not ready, and asked whetherJustin MacCarthy's party would agree to an inquiry which he thoughtthere was a chance of the Government agreeing to, and which wouldeducate his colleagues and his party if granted and carried through. Iwas consternated, but replied that such a statement was an obvious lie, but, between ourselves, I fear it is not, perhaps not even anexaggeration or a misrepresentation. Justin MacCarthy is on the staff ofthe _Daily News_, Labouchere is one of the proprietors, and I cannotimagine any motive for his inventing such a statement. If it is trueLord Carnarvon has played the devil. "[21]

With regard to the overtures which Mr. Gladstone had made, for whichprecedents in plenty were supplied by the repeal of the Test Act in1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Repeal of the Corn Laws in1848, and the extension of the franchise in 1867, Lord Salisbury saw init only anxiety to take office on the part of his great opponent, andprophesied that if his hunger were not prematurely gratified he would beforced into some line of conduct which would be discreditable to him anddisastrous, and when the Liberal leader on the 23rd again pressed for adefinite answer to his approaches he was refused a communication ofviews. 

"Thus idly, " says Mr. Winston Churchill, "drifted away what was perhapsthe best hope of the settlement of Ireland which that generation was tosee. "

The view which Mr. Gladstone took of the events of the winter of 1885-6is illustrated by a memorandum which he wrote in 1897, in which hesays:--

"I attached value to the acts and language of Lord Carnarvon and theother favourable manifestations. Subsequently we had but too muchevidence of a deliberate intention to deceive the Irish with a view totheir support at the election. "[22]

The attitude of the Tories and the rankling memory of the bitter debateson the Liberal Coercion Bill of 1882, coupled with the attitude of theTories and the deception which they practised, resulted, notunnaturally, in the fact that Parnell threw his weight in favour of theConservatives at the general election which ensued, and by this means, it is estimated, lost at least twenty seats to the Liberals. Immediatelyafter the election the Viceroy and the Chief Secretary retired, butthough their successors were appointed in the third week in December, itwas not till the middle of January that the resignations were madepublic. The first act of the new Chief Secretary was to announce that, in spite of the emphatic disclaimers of the previous June, a CoercionBill was to be introduced, and as a result of the Irish voting with theLiberals the Tories were defeated, and Mr. Gladstone took office. TheHome Rule Bill which was introduced was thrown out in the month of June, the Government being in a minority of thirty. Had it not been forParnell's manifesto, urging Irishmen in Great Britain to vote forConservatives, the Government would have had a majority of between tenand twenty, and, moreover, if a general election had followed, themorale of the Liberals would have been much greater if they had beenfighting for the second time within a few months shoulder to shoulderwith the Irishmen, and not been in the position in which in fact theywere--of enjoying the support in June of those who had opposed them inNovember. 

Let us now turn to the MacDonnell incident. One of the first acts of Mr. Balfour, on becoming Prime Minister in July, 1902, on the retirement ofLord Salisbury was to give Mr. Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, a seat inthe Cabinet. In September Mr. Wyndham appointed as Under Secretary SirAntony MacDonnell, a distinguished Indian Civil Servant and Member ofthe Indian Council, who had been in turn head of the Government ofBurma, the Central Provinces, and the North-West Provinces, and who hadwith conspicuous ability carried on financial and agrarian reforms inthe East. Lord Lansdowne, during his tenure of the Viceroyalty, formed ahigh estimate of his knowledge and ability, and it was on hisrecommendation that Mr. Wyndham appointed this official to the post. Thecorrespondence between the two, which Mr. Redmond elicited from theGovernment two and a half years later, shows that it was with somereluctance that the Under Secretary yielded to the pressure brought tobear on him to accept the office. 

"I am an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a Liberal in politics, " hewrote. "I have strong Irish sympathies. I do not see eye to eye with youin all matters of Irish administration, and I think that there is nolikelihood of good coming from such a _régime_ of coercion as the_Times_ has recently outlined. " For all that, being anxious to do someservice to Ireland, he declared his willingness to take office providedthere was some chance of his succeeding, which he thought there wouldbe, "on this condition, that I should have adequate opportunities ofinfluencing the policy and acts of the Irish administration, andsubject, of course, to your control, freedom of action in Executivematters. For many years in India I directed administration on thelargest scale, and I know that if you send me to Ireland the opportunityof mere secretarial criticism would fall short of the requirements of myposition. If I were installed in office in Ireland my aims, broadlystated, would be:--(1) The maintenance of order; (2) the solution of theland question on the basis of voluntary sale; (3) where sale does notoperate the fixation of rent on some self-acting principle whereby localinquiries would be obviated; (4) the co-ordination, control, anddirection of boards and other administrative bodies; (5) the settlementof the education question in the general spirit of Mr. Balfour's views, and generally the promotion of general administrative improvement andconciliation. "

Mr. Wyndham's acceptance of these terms was explicit, and it wasunderstood, as the Chief Secretary put it in the House of Commons whenthe whole subject came up for review, that Sir Antony was appointedrather as a colleague than as a mere Under Secretary to register Mr. Wyndham's will, and although in the House of Commons Mr. Balfour saidthat Sir Antony was bound by the rules applying to all Civil Servants, in the House of Lords Lord Lansdowne declared that, "it had beenrecognised that the Under Secretary would have greater freedom ofaction, greater opportunities of initiative, than if he had been acandidate in the ordinary way. "

One of the first results of the new departure was the withdrawal of theapplication of the Coercion Act, which had been in force since April, 1902, an action which roused angry protests from the Orangemen, as didalso the words used, in what was almost his first speech, by LordDudley, the new Viceroy, who had succeeded Lord Cadogan, and whoannounced that, "the opinion of the Government was, and it was his ownopinion, that the only way to govern Ireland properly was to govern itaccording to Irish ideas instead of according to British ideas. "

During 1903 interest was largely engrossed in the fate of the Land Act, and it was not till the autumn of 1904 that it became known that beforedrafting in its final form the programme of the Irish Reform AssociationLord Dunraven had secured the assistance of the Under Secretary with theknowledge of the Chief Secretary and the Viceroy, the latter of whom, according to Lord Lansdowne's declaration in the House of Lords, "didnot think that Sir Antony was exceeding his functions"--a fact to whichcolour was given by the circumstance that on several occasions the UnderSecretary discussed the reforms with the Lord Lieutenant. 

Mr. Wyndham, on behalf of the Government, had taken the unusual courseof repudiating the Dunraven scheme in a letter to the _Times_, but inspite of this, Irish Unionists wrote to the _Times_ to express theirsuspicions "whether in short the devolution scheme is not the pricesecretly arranged to be paid for the Nationalist acquiescence in asettlement of the land question on generous terms. "

Then it was that the _Times_ expressed its opinion that when a UnionistLord Lieutenant and a Unionist Under Secretary are discussing reformswhich the Cabinet condemn as Home Rule in a thin disguise, it isobviously time that they quitted their posts. Three weeks later Mr. Wyndham resigned, but Sir Antony, who had had the refusal of theGovernorship of Bombay--the third greatest Governorship in the BritishEmpire--retained his position, though his presence at Dublin Castle hadbeen described by some fervent Orangemen as a menace to the loyal andlaw-abiding inhabitants of Ireland, and by the Irish Attorney-General asa gross betrayal of the Unionist position and an injury to the Unionistcause. Mr. Long, however, very rapidly won the hearts of those who hadsucceeded in securing the resignation of Mr. Wyndham by his descriptionof devolution as "a cowardly surrender to the forces of disorder, " andin the same strain the Earl of Westmeath spoke of "truckling todisloyalty and trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated. "

At the opening of the session of 1905 the whole question was ventilated. The official explanations proving unsatisfactory, the Orangemen decidedto withdraw their support from the Government on all questions affectingIreland, and the leader of the party went so far as to utter the threatthat "Ulster might have to draw upon her reserves, " which was taken tomean that the Orangemen who were members of the Government would resign_en masse_--an action which, in the moribund condition of the Ministry, would have meant an instant dissolution. At the very beginning of thesession Mr. Wyndham had announced that the matter of Sir Antony'sdealings with Lord Dunraven had been considered by the Cabinet, and "theGovernment expressed through me their view that the action of Sir AntonyMacDonnell was indefensible. But they authorised me to add that theywere thoroughly satisfied that his conduct was not open to theimputation of disloyalty. "

The equivocal and ambiguous position in which the Unionists placedthemselves in the course of this episode is a striking commentary on theimpossibility of governing a country against its will. The Tories triedonce again, in the historic phrase, to catch the Whigs bathing and stealtheir clothes, but this time they failed. When the Orangemen held apistol at the Government's head and bade its members stand and deliver, Mr. Wyndham had perforce to resign, but the mystery, which has not yetbeen cleared up, is the reason why the Viceroy and the Under Secretary, who were tarred with the same brush, retained their posts. 

It should in frankness be stated, however, that when during the sessionof 1907 the Prime Minister remarked on a certain occasion that he alwaysthought Mr. Wyndham resigned the Chief Secretaryship in consequence ofcriticisms from the Orangemen below the gangway on his own side, Mr. Balfour interrupted with the remark--"That is a complete mis-statement, and I think the right honourable gentleman must know it. "

One may well ask, in view of this, what was meant by Mr. Wyndham when, speaking on the reasons for his retirement, on May 9th, 1905, heaccounted for it by the fact that "the situation in Ireland wascomplicated by personal misunderstandings, " producing "an atmosphere ofsuspicion, " which was an obvious reference, as most people supposed, tosuch denunciations as that of Mr. William Moore of the Chief Secretary's"wretched, rotten, sickening policy of conciliation. " Thedisingenuousness marking the whole proceeding is well shown by the factthat although on announcing Mr. Wyndham's resignation Mr. Balfoursaid:--"The ground of his resignation is not ill-health, "[23] less thana year later, when asked during the election at Manchester by a hecklerto state the reason why Mr. Wyndham retired, the reply of Mr. Balfourwas--"He retired chiefly on account of health. "[24]

From the correspondence which passed in March, 1906, between Lord Dudleyand Sir Edward Carson, and which was published in the Press, we have theexpress statement from the ex-Lord Lieutenant that Mr. Balfour "neverconveyed to me any intimation that he or the Government disapprovedstrongly or otherwise of my conduct. "

The correspondence arose over a remark made by Sir Edward Carson, to theeffect that Lord Dudley had made statements both ways as to thedesirability of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas. Challengedto make good the assertion, which he declared was based on a privateconversation, Sir Edward Carson went on to assert that the Viceroy hadon another occasion expressed the opinion to him that Ireland should begoverned through the agency of the Catholic priesthood. This Lord Dudleydenied as vehemently as he did the imputation of facing both ways, andin reply went on to write:--

"That you should have formed an impression of that kind from anyconversation with me confirms my belief that the violence of youropinions on Irish political questions make it quite impossible for youto estimate justly the standpoint of anyone whose views on suchquestions may be more moderate and tolerant than your own. It is not, however, by violence and intolerance that the cause of union is bestserved, and my experience in Ireland has shown me very clearly that thepresent system of government constantly receives from its most clamorousadvocates blows as heavy and as effective as any that could be dealt toit by its avowed enemies. "

The Government tried to ride two horses abreast--to rule Irelandotherwise than by force, and to maintain itself in power with the helpof Orange votes--two courses, each irreconcilable with the other. Theirposition reminds me of Alphonse Daudet's immortal creation, Tartarin deTarascon, with a double nature, partly that of Don Quixote and partly ofSancho Panza, at one moment urged on by the glory, and at the next heldback by the prospect of the hardships, of lion-hunting inAfrica--"Couvre toi de gloire, " dit Tartarin Quichotte, "Couvre toi deflanelle dit Tartarin Sancho. "

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for agovernment which does not recognise democratic principles to make anyheadway in the work of amelioration in Ireland. The moral is that thoseresponsible for the administration of the country have found themselvesby the force of circumstances, even against their will, driven to applypopular principles of government in order that they may secure fairnessand efficiency, and my contention that this is so is borne out by thetwo incidents to which I have referred, in which the Conservativesescaped only by the skin of their teeth from committing themselves to apolicy which would have won them the hostility of their Orange allies. 

The latter have in truth secured their own way to a remarkable extent. The promise has not been fulfilled which Mr. Chamberlain made after theUnionist victory of 1886, to the effect that Lord Salisbury and theConservative leaders were prepared to consider and review the"irritating centralising system of administration which is known asDublin Castle. " At the time of the ill-fated Round Table Conference, which Sir William Harcourt convened, Mr. Chamberlain committed himselfto the expediency of establishing some form of legislative authority inDublin, and admitted that such a body should be allowed to organise theform of Executive Government on whatever lines it thought fit, and SirWest Ridgeway, as Under Secretary, subsequently carried out the behestsof the same Government by outlining a scheme of self-government by meansof Provincial Councils with a partly elected board to control finance. All these facts serve to show the injustice--in view of acknowledgedfacts--of the description by the late Attorney-General for Ireland ofthe Wyndham proposals as "mean and cruel desertion. "

There is no part of the Irish question in respect of which more has beensaid which is misleading than what is known as the problem of Ulster. Ihave already explained what a misnomer this is. In the Counties ofDonegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan there are moreCatholics than Protestants, while in the Counties of Armagh and Down thenumbers of the two creeds are almost equally divided. What is known asthe question of Ulster should in truth be known as that of Belfast, forit is only in that city and in the adjacent Counties of Antrim and Downthat the religious question is most acute. 

The social conditions of the country, which have always been to someextent, though not to that existing in recent years, agricultural, leadone to seek a cause in the conditions of Land Tenure for the differentdegrees of prosperity pervading the North-East corner of Ulster and therest of Ireland. It is impossible to doubt that the Ulster Custom ofTenant Right had an immense effect on the economic status of theprovince. Under it the system of tenure which held the field in theother three provinces was replaced by one in which the tenants hadsecurity against arbitrary eviction so long as they paid their rents, and, in addition, were entitled to sell their interest in the propertyto the incoming tenant, and this Tenant Right sold often for as much ashalf, and sometimes for as much as the full, fee-simple of the holding. The sum could be obtained on the tenant voluntarily vacating the holdingor on his being unable to pay the rent, the landlord being entitled tobe consulted with a view to approval by him of the incoming tenant. 

The importance of the custom can be recognised in the light of the factthat in England, where improvements are effected in nearly every casenot by the tenant but by the landlord, it has been found necessary, nevertheless, to give legislative sanction to Tenant Right. 

This has been effected by the Agricultural Holdings Acts, 1875, 1883, and 1900, under which tenants are entitled to statutory compensation forimprovements, whether permanent, as, for example, buildings; fordrainage purposes; or, as in the case of manure, for the improvement ofthe soil. 

The result of the Ulster Custom on the industry of the Northerntenant-farmer, who enjoyed a freedom of sale and a fixity of tenure, and, further, a compensation for improvements long before the tenants ofthe South and West secured these advantages, are impossible toover-estimate. Again, in considering the relative economic positions ofthe members of the two religions, it is impossible to blink the factthat little more than a century has passed since the Irish Catholicswere treated as helots under a penal code, and that, if they have beenbehind hand in the industrial race, account must be taken of the lead inthe saddle to which in that way they were subjected. The resultingpreponderance of Protestants among the landed gentry led to a furtherfactor in the ostracism which in the past they exercised as employers oflabour, whether agricultural or industrial, which, besides its directeffect of breeding and perpetuating sectarian hate, served in aneconomic sense to unfit Catholics for employment, and to persuade thosewho in fact were least unfitted and retained their perceptive faculties, that the scope for their energies was to be found only abroad, and sotended to leave behind a residue of labourers rendered unfit foremployment as against the time when the prejudice of the richer classeswas removed. The non-application in the more purely Protestant parts ofUlster of the principles which held the field in other parts of Irelandmade for prosperity in that province by tending towards an economiccondition of the labour market, unimpeded by artificial restrictions, arising from religious differences and imposed at the hands of employersof labour. Another factor in the contentment of the Ulster Presbyteriansunder the varying vicissitudes of Irish government is to be found in thehistory of the Regium Donum. The Scottish settlers in 1610 havingbrought with them their ministers, the latter were put in possession ofthe tithes of the parishes in which they were planted. These theyenjoyed till the death of Charles I. , but payments were stopped on theirrefusal to recognise the Commonwealth. Henry Cromwell, however, allowedthe body £100, which Charles II. Increased to £600, per annum, buttowards the end of his reign, and during that of James II. , it wasdiscontinued. William III. Renewed the grant, increasing it to £1, 200, and it was still further augmented in 1785 and 1792. After the UnionCastlereagh largely increased the amount of the Regium Donum, andcompletely altered its mode of distribution, making it in factcontingent on the loyalty of the parson to the Union. The spirit inwhich it was granted is well shown in a letter in Castlereagh's memoirs, in which the writer, addressing the Chief Secretary just after the voteshad been passed by Parliament, declared--"Never before was Ulster underthe dominion of the British Crown. It had a distinct moral existencebefore, and now the Presbyterian ministry will be a subordinateecclesiastical aristocracy, whose feeling will be that of zealousloyalty, and whose influence on those people will be as purely sedativewhen it should be, and exciting when it should be, as it was the reversebefore. " Those who blame Pitt for not having carried through his schemesof concurrent endowment, and who see in his failure to do so, one reasonfor the ill success of his policy of Union, must admit the importance ofthe fact that the Presbyterian clergy were pensioners of the State. Anotion of the extent to which they were subsidised may be inferred fromthe fact that by the Commutation Clauses of the Church DisestablishmentAct of 1869, the Dissenters secured as compensation for the loss of theRegium Donum and other payments a sum of £770, 000, while the equivalentamount paid in lieu of the Maynooth grant to the Catholics--numbering atleast eight times as many--amounted to only £372, 000. 

It was Froude who declared that if the woollen and linen industries hadnot been hampered there would now be four Ulsters instead of one. Evenin the days before restrictions were placed on the production of Irishlinen for the better encouragement of the English trade, the North ofIreland was far ahead of the rest of the country in the matter offlax-spinning, and this pre-eminence was mainly due to the fact that theclimate there is more suited to that plant than in other parts ofIreland. 

Starting with this advantage, linen was able in that province to survivethe impositions placed on its production, while in places less favouredby a suitable climate the industry went to the wall. To assume off-hand, without going into the innumerable causes which effect such movements ofcommerce, that innate thrift was responsible, apart from all othercauses, for the progress of Belfast is an attitude similar to that ofone who should hold that nothing but the stupidity of the East Anglianyokel has prevented that country from becoming as much a centre ofindustry as is Lancashire, for such a sweeping generalisation would takeno account of other forces at work in the development of the greatcommercial centres of the North as, for example, the fact that thepeculiar conditions of the Lancashire climate are such that theprocesses of cotton-spinning can be best effected in an atmospherecontaining the amount of moisture which there prevails. 

In Belfast the interdependence of the linen and the ship-buildingtrades--in one of which the men, while in the other the women, of manyfamilies are employed--is one of the most powerful instruments of socialprogress. The narrow sea which separates it from Scotland and thegeographical conformation of Belfast Lough have, moreover, a greatbearing on its prosperity. Independence of Irish railways with theirexcessive freights, crippling by their incidence all export trade, in atown like Belfast, nine-tenths of the industrial output of which goesacross the sea, and the advantage which it has over all other Irishtowns in its proximity, again independently of Irish railways, to theLanarkshire, Ayrshire, and Cumberland coalfields, are very importantconsiderations in view of the obstacle which the scarcity of coal is toall commercial enterprises in the island. 

Finally, it must not be forgotten, in reference to the greatest of theindustries of the North of Ireland, that a very exceptional impetus wasgiven to the development of the commercial enterprise of Belfast at atime which might otherwise have proved a critical period in herindustrial career, by the fact that the American Civil War caused aslump in cotton which resulted in the failure of a very large number ofLancashire cotton mills, the place of which was taken by the linen millsof Belfast, which have profited ever since from the advantage gained inthat crisis and the growth of their trade which it effected. 

I have said enough, I think, to show that the attempt to foist the blamefor the backwardness--in an industrial sense--of the rest of the countryas compared with the North-East corner, on the difference of religion, is to close one's eyes to half a dozen other factors which must in truthalso be appreciated in order that one may arrive at a proper estimate ofthe real reason for the disparity which undoubtedly exists. The factswhich I have mentioned serve to show the unwarrantable nature of theassumption which accounts for the prosperity of North-East Ulster byconsiderations of race and religion alone. That several generations ofprogress in the industrial field have had a great effect on thecharacter of the people of Belfast in respect of thrift, energy, andindustry I am not concerned to deny, but on what ground in this light isto be explained the decrease in population of Antrim and Down which hasgone on concurrently with the enormous increase in that of Belfast? Thatextrinsic factors such as those of geographical situation have much todo with increase of prosperity is well illustrated by the industrialgrowth of Wexford, with its manufactories of agricultural implements anddairy machinery, which is largely attributable to the close proximity ofthat town to the coalfields and iron of South Wales. 

As to the argument that political preoccupation is responsible fornational backwardness, in the case of Finland the convulsions of abitter political agitation have not been found incompatible with anincrease of wealth and of population. 

In this connection it is germane to ask what the Protestant people ofUlster have done for the rest of the country, and to inquire if, withall their commercial success, they have been in the van of progress. That they have never produced a great leader of men or framer of policyis a remarkable fact, and to every demand of their fellow-countrymenthey have answered with a reiterated _non possumus_, backed by threatsof their intentions in case they are ignored, which, in point of fact, they have never carried into effect. 

The Orangemen in turn opposed Emancipation, Tithe Reform, Land Reform, Church Disestablishment, the Ballot, Local Government, and thesettlement of the University question. Their attitude to the LandConference we have seen elsewhere, and in view of this record one mayask whether or not they deserve Mr. Morley's condemnation as "anirreconcilable junto, always unteachable, always wrong. "

That their loyalty is contingent on the maintenance of their ascendancyand the enforcement of their views, their reception of the Church Act of1869 well shows, as does also the manner in which in 1886 theythreatened armed resistance if the Bill to which they were opposed wascarried. That they submitted to the Church Act without carrying outtheir threats is a matter of history, and there is at least a strongprobability that in the latter event a similar effect would have beenwitnessed. 

The removal of religious tests in the public life of Great Britain hasbeen accomplished so completely that it is difficult for Englishmen torealise the extent to which the spirit, if not the letter, of tests atthis day persists in Ireland. 

We have recently seen the adjournment of the House of Commons moved bythe Orangemen because a rate collector in Ballinasloe did not receivethe appointment to a post for which he applied, and the demands ofCatholics for a due share of position and of influence is denounced as aclaim for monopoly. 

To show how much evidence there is to sustain the charge I will quote aProtestant writer on this question of preferment--"Three-quarters of theIrish people, " she writes, "are Catholics. Of 23 Lords Lieutenant since1832 not one has been a Catholic, nor ever by law can be a Catholic, andonly 3 have been Irishmen, tame Irish, as the word goes in Ireland ofthe denationalised Irishman who has shaken off allegiance to his ownpeople. Of 30 Chief Secretaries, almost all English, not one has been aCatholic. It is not necessary that the Chief Secretary or the Commanderof the Forces should be Protestant, but no Catholic has ever yet beenallowed to fill either of these exalted offices. Of the 173 Irish peersonly 14 (including Viscount Taafe of Austria) are Catholics, and the 28representative peers in the House of Lords are all free from the taintof the religion of the Irish people, and powerful to drive opinionagainst it. Out of 60 Privy Councillors in Ireland 4 only are Catholics, and 3 out of 17 judges. Eleven out of the 60 Sub-Commissioners areCatholics; 7 out of the 21 County Court Judges. The head of the policeis a Protestant. One only of the 36 County Inspectors is a Catholic. Of170 District Inspectors only 10 are of that faith, and of 65 ResidentMagistrates only 15 are Catholics. If we take the Valuation Offices, theRegistration Offices, the Inspectorship of Factories, the Board ofWorks, the Woods and Forests, the Ordnance Survey, and any and everypublic department, Protestants hold three places out of four, thoughthey are but one-quarter of the whole population. The extreme party, aswe have seen, have secured no less than seven offices in the Government, and their followers and friends hold about 90 per cent. Of the highersalaried posts under the Crown in Ireland. "[25]

The same writer attributes the glaring discrepancy between the figureswhich have just been quoted and the ratio of Catholics and Protestantsin the population of Ireland to "a union of Protestant fanaticism andplace-hunting greed. " That it is due to any lack of ability among IrishCatholics I scarcely think anyone will urge, and in this connection anamazing article, which I remember reading in an English paper, is ofinterest. The writer, a Unionist from Ulster, strove to show the mannerin which the influence of the Vatican was making itself felt in Englishpolitics by pointing to the number of Catholics--mostly Irishmen--whoheld high posts in the British Diplomatic, Civil, Military, and NavalServices, the presence of whom, which he tried to indicate as a menace, but which most Englishmen view with equanimity, shows by contrast theextent to which a taboo is placed in Ireland on officials who adhere tothe creed of the majority of their countrymen. 

Enough has been said as to the preference shown to one caste, religiousand political, to explain the reason for the fact that in Ireland the_soi-disant_ loyalist has become synonymous with place-hunter. IfUnionism in Ireland pervades the richer classes, it does so also inGreat Britain, but in Ireland the inherent weakness of an establishedChurch, by which its prestige and the cachet which it gives, make it aharbour of refuge for those who wish for advancement, and who think thatif they creep and intrude and climb into the fold they will secure it, all these are factors, which are present in Dublin, where theEstablishment is Unionism with Dublin Castle as its cathedral. Socialambition, anxiety for preferment or for an _entree_ into society, areall at work to bring it to pass that a large amount of wealth andinfluence are ranged on the side of the Union. It is a damagingindictment which has been drawn up against the Irish landlords by Mr. T. W. Russell in his recent book, where he declares of this class, withwhich he fought side by side against the two Home Rule Bills, that hehas come to the conclusion, slowly but surely, "that in pretending tofight for the Union these men were simply fighting for their owninterests, that Rent and not Patriotism was their guiding motive, "[26]and the same charge was formulated a few years ago by Lord Rossmore, aformer Grand Master of the Orange Society, when he made a publicdeclaration that the so-called Loyalist minority in Ireland were blindlyfollowing the lead of a few professional politicians, who felt thattheir salaries and positions depended on the divisions and antipathiesof those who should be working together for the good of their commoncountry. 

There is no aspect of the Irish question in regard to which more dust isthrown in Englishmen's eyes than that which is summed up in the one worddisloyalty. The prestige of the Crown in Great Britain, where itsfunctions are atrophied to a greater extent than in any other country inEurope, is one of the most striking features in contemporary Englishlife. The loyalty of a nation is chiefly due to associations formed byevents in its history. The extreme unpopularity of Queen Victoria inGreat Britain in the earlier years of her reign, which arose from herretirement as far as possible from public life on the death of thePrince Consort, completely disappeared with the passage of years, whenher age, her sex, and her private virtues overcame the antipathy which avery natural reticence on the part of a grief-stricken widow hadaroused throughout Great Britain. The associations connected with theCrown in Ireland are not many. From the day on which Dutch William beatEnglish James at the Boyne in circumstances not calculated to arouse theenthusiasm of Irish Catholics for either the lawful king or the usurper, no Sovereign set foot in Ireland till George IV. Visited the country in1824. The main function of Ireland as regards the monarchs of that timewas that its pension list served to provide for the maintenance of Royalfavourites as to whose income they wished no questions to be asked. Curran thundered against the Irish pension list as "containing everyvariety of person, from the excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney to thebase situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted. "In saying this he was understating rather than overstating the case, since a very cursory inspection of the State papers will reveal the factthat the mistresses and bastards of every English King, from Charles II. To George II. , drew their incomes from the Irish establishment free fromthe inquisitive prying of the English House of Commons. Although GeorgeIII. Had no need to conceal any palace scandals in this way, we haveseen how the bigotry of "an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king"postponed Emancipation for more than a generation, and one of the"princes, the dregs of their dull race, " of whom Shelley went on tospeak, the Duke of York, declared in the House of Lords in 1825--"I willoppose the Catholic claims whatever may be my situation in life. So helpme God. "

The respectful reception accorded to Queen Victoria--whose dislike ofIreland was notorious--on the very rare occasions on which she visitedthe country serves to show the absence of hostility to the Crown on thepart of the great mass of the people, but the small number of thesevisits during the course of the longest reign in English history lendspoint to a question asked by Mr. James Bryce in a book published morethan twenty years ago--Why has the most obvious service a monarch canrender been so strangely neglected? When the present King visited theSouth of Ireland as Prince of Wales in 1885, at a time when Mr. CharlesParnell's prestige was at its zenith, he was greeted with the halfhumorous sally--"We will have no Prince but Charley, " which at any ratecontrasts favourably with the shouts of "Popish Ned, " which his allegedsympathy with the popular side evoked on his visit a few years later toLondonderry. 

The trivial fact that the English National Anthem was drowned at thedegree day of the Royal University a few years ago by the fact that thestudents insisted on singing "God Save Ireland" at the end of a ceremonywhich even in the decorous surroundings of the Sheldonian and the SenateHouse is marked by a large amount of disrespectful licence, neverthelessprovided the _Times_ and the Unionist Press in general, for several dayswith a text upon which they hung their leading articles in theexploitation of their favourite theme, but no attention has been drawnin these quarters to the periodical threat of Orange exponents of acontingent loyalty to "throw the Crown into the Boyne" as a protestagainst the various assaults which have been made upon their prerogativeby Parliament, and no mention was made in the English Press of the factthat on the day of the postponement of the coronation, owing to theillness of the King, the organ of the "disloyalists"--the _Freeman'sJournal_--ended its leading article with the words "God Save the King, "which were a mere expression of the feelings of the bulk of its readers. 

Loyalty, said Swift, is the foible of the Irish people, and it is aremarkable fact, in spite of the detestable insult to their religiousviews which the law exacts from the Sovereign at his accession, that thepopular welcome accorded to his Majesty, on the part of individuals, should remove any ground for the suggestion that the Crown, whichGrattan always declared was an Imperial Crown, is viewed with any animusin Ireland. 

That public bodies as such refuse to offer addresses of welcome is dueto a conviction that to do so would be interpreted as an abdication ofthe popular position, an acquiescence in the _status quo_, a recognitionof the system of government of which the Sovereign is head; and it mustnot be forgotten in this connection that, if the Sovereign is neutral, his representative in Ireland is a strong party man, and that thetendency which his Majesty has so strongly deprecated in England on morethan one occasion, of employing emblems of royalty as symbols of party, has been ineradicably established by the ascendancy faction in Ireland, where the Union Jack is a party badge and God Save the King has beenmonopolised as a party song. 

CHAPTER VIII

IRELAND AND DEMOCRACY

 "A majority of Irish members turned the balance in favour of the great Reform Bill of 1832, and from that day there has been scarcely a democratic measure which they have not powerfully assisted. When, indeed, we consider the votes which they have given, the principles they have been the means of introducing into English legislation, and the influence they have exercised upon the tone and character of the House of Commons, it is probably not too much to say that their presence in the British Parliament has proved the most powerful of all agents in accelerating the democratic transformation of English politics. "

 --W. E. H. LECKY, _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_, Vol. VIII. , p. 483. 

In Ireland perhaps more than in most countries history repeats itself. The lament of Lord Anglesea, the Lord Lieutenant, in 1831, who, findinghimself a _roi faineant_, declared that "Things are now come to thatpass that the question is whether O'Connell or I shall govern Ireland, "found its echo just fifty years later when Parnell enjoyed so powerful aposition that writers were fain to draw a contrast between the coronetedimpotence of the head of the Executive and the uncrowned power of theIrish leader. 

The history of Irish representation at Westminster is one of the mostcurious chapters in Parliamentary annals. It is only in the last thirtyyears that it has reached the importance which it now possesses, although of all Liberal Governments since the great Reform Bill, that of1880 and that which is in power to-day are the only two which have had amajority independently of the Irish vote, and it is worth rememberingthat the Ministry of 1880 ended its career amid the pitfalls of an IrishCoercion Bill. The maxim to beware when all men speak well of you, there has been no need to impress on Irish members since the days ofParnell, as there was at the time when under Butt's leadership apunctilious observance of Parliamentary procedure earned for the Irishrepresentatives a contumelious respect which laughed their demands outof court. 

If Parnell had not set out with the deliberate intention of makingIreland stink in the nostrils of the respectable English gentlemen whothronged the benches of the finest club in London, the protest againstmisgovernment would have taken the form of violence in Ireland and notof obstruction in the House of Commons. The orderly debates of Butt'stime were as unproductive in showing the Irish representatives to be inearnest as were the wholesale suspensions of the later _régime_profitable, and if proof of this be needed it is to be found in the factthat in 1877 there were but eight English Home Rulers in the House ofCommons, and that to attempt to secure reforms was to knock one's headagainst a stone wall. Speaking of the Irish representation in 1880 Mr. Gladstone made this solemn declaration:--"I believe a greater calumny, amore gross and injurious statement, could not possibly be made againstthe Irish nation. We believe we are at issue with an organised attemptto override the free will and judgment of the Irish nation. " That bubblewas pricked after the Franchise Act of 1885, when Parnell returned tothe House of Commons with nearly twenty more followers than he had hadbefore. 

There is a quotation of Blackstone's from Lord Burghley to the effectthat England could never be ruined but by a Parliament, and Englishmenmust admit that they have paid a price, though by no means as we thinktoo dearly, for insisting on the maintenance in their chamber, underexisting conditions of a foreign body against its will and admittedlyhostile to the traditions of which they are so proud. The closure, which Lord Randolph Churchill used to pronounce with elaborate emphasisas _clôture_, the curtailment of the rights of private members, thegrowth in the power of the Cabinet, and _pari passu_ the loss in poweron the part of the House, all these are instances of the way in whichthe sand in the bearings has been able to thwart the Parliamentarymachine. "If we cannot rule ourselves, " said Parnell in 1884, "we can, at least, cause them to be ruled as we choose. "

In spite of the odium which it entailed, Parnell, once he had "taken hiscoat off, " maintained this attitude regardless of the feelings itevoked, which are perhaps as well expressed as anywhere in a letter ofLord Salisbury to Lord Randolph Churchill when he declared "theinstinctive feeling of an Englishman is to wish to get rid of anIrishman, " to which one may reply--"What! did the hand then of thePotter shake?"

Though abuse of the plaintiff's attorney has been indulged in so often, neither English party has scorned, as from its expressions one wouldhave expected, to make use of the Irish vote when its own career hasbeen in danger. The appeals which in spite of this one sees addressed atintervals to the Irish leaders to abandon their attitude of _Noloepiscopari_ and take Ministerial office, for which some, at any rate, oftheir number have by their ability been conspicuously fitted, is toignore the fundamental protest on which this self-denying ordnancedepends. The protest against the _status quo_ has been traditionallymade in this manner; to waive it would be tantamount to an abdication ofthe claims which have been so consistently made. To accept office mightbe to curry favour with one party or the other, but itsrefusal--especially as compared with its acceptance by the IrishUnionists--does much to deprive the enemy of the occasion to suggestsordid motives as reasons for the continuance of the Parliamentaryagitation. 

In urging his great reform, Lord Durham was wont to lay great stress onthe evil effect of the English party system on Canadian politics. Theparty system in Great Britain acts as a corrective and an adjustingmechanism to a degree which is never known in Ireland, where theprinciple of government with consent of the governed has only beenapplied to one corner of the island. 

The supreme example of so many, in which concessions have been made toIreland in times of public danger, which had been obstinately refused intimes of public security is that of Emancipation, concerning which Peelin June, 1828, reaffirmed his determination never to surrender, but inJanuary, 1829, on the ground that five-sixths of the infantry force ofthe three kingdoms was engaged in police work in Ireland, introduced theBill which obtained the Royal consent in circumstances such as to rob itof its grace and to make gratitude impossible. I am not, however, hereconcerned with emancipation as such, but with the set-off for itsconcession, under which on the principle of taking away with one hand, while giving with the other, the forty shilling freeholders, who hadreturned O'Connell at the Clare election, were disfranchised to thenumber of 200, 000, and in this way was gilded the pill for the purposeof placating the English governing classes. The same principle wasfollowed in 1841, when the Corporations of Ireland were thrown open toCatholics, for out of some sixty-five all except ten or eleven wereabolished. The results of the disfranchising clauses of the Act of 1829are to be seen in the fact that in 1850, while in England the electorswere twenty-eight per cent. Of the adult male population, in Irelandthey were only two per cent. A Bill introduced in that year would, if ithad passed into law, have raised the percentage in Ireland to fifteen. The Lords amendments altered the percentage to eight, and in its finalform it was left at about ten. Instead of imposing an £8 rentalqualification one of £12 was imposed, and by this means were excluded900, 000 voters who would have secured the suffrage under the lowerqualification. Speaking of the Franchise, Mr. Lecky, in "Democracy andLiberty, " declared that--"The elements of good government must be soughtfor in Ireland, on a higher electoral plane than in England. " This is amatter of opinion, and I find it interesting to reflect that the ablestConservative of my acquaintance--a Tory of the school of Lord Eldon--hason several occasions expressed to me a deliberate opinion in exactcontradiction of this, to the effect that owing to the relative mentalcalibres of the races there is need of a higher franchise qualificationin England than in either Ireland or Scotland. Speculations of thiskind, however, are unprofitable, seeing that the competency of the Irishpeasants as citizens has been acknowledged by the grant of a widehousehold suffrage safeguarded by a careful system of ballot. 

When the last great extension of the franchise to householders in thecountry was made in 1884 there were those who asserted that itsapplication to Ireland would be folly. Mr. W. H. Smith, the leader of theConservatives in the House of Commons, declared that any extension ofthe suffrage in Ireland would lead to "confiscation of property, ruin ofindustry, withdrawal of capital, misery, wretchedness, and war"; theleading Whig statesman said the concession to Ireland of equal electoralprivileges with those of England would be folly, but in spite of thesegloomy prognostications the omission of Ireland from the scope of theAct was not proposed by Conservative statesmen, and Lord Hartingtonhimself undertook the duty of moving the second reading of a Billcontaining provisions which a few weeks before he had described as mostunwise. By this Act the enfranchised inhabitants of Ireland weremultiplied more than threefold, and the share of Ireland of the "twomillion intelligent voters" who were added to the electorate was200, 000. In the redistribution of seats which accompanied the FranchiseAct of 1884 the representation of Ireland was, by an arrangement betweenparties, left unimpaired, and this leads me to a matter which serves, Ithink, to show with what speed events move and how true was that remarkof Disraeli's to Lord Lytton that "in politics two years are aneternity. " It is little more than two years since the burning politicalquestion was the redistribution of seats on the lines proposed by Mr. Gerald Balfour. The Unionist Press has for some years been endeavouringto rouse public opinion on this question of the allegedover-representation of Ireland in the House of Commons, and in view ofthe share of attention which the matter received in the closing days ofthe last Parliament it is as well to devote some attention to the topic. 

By the Act of Union, which our opponents hold so sacred, Ireland wasgiven 100 members in the House of Commons, and in the House of Lords 28representative Peers, together with Bishops of the then EstablishedChurch, and it was further enacted that this should be herrepresentation "for ever. " On the population basis, which to-day isurged by Unionists as the only fair mode of apportioningrepresentatives, Ireland was entitled at the date of the Union to manymore members than in fact she obtained. Her population at that time wasnearly five and a half millions, that of Great Britain was less than tenand a half millions, and so, though she could claim more than a third ofthe inhabitants of the three kingdoms, her representation was less thanone-sixth. 

By the Reform Bill of 1832 the Irish members were increased to 105. Twoseats have since been disfranchised, and we thus arrive at 103--thefigure at which the representation of the country stands to-day. Thedisproportion from which Ireland suffered at the time of the Union hadbecome still more acute by the time of the great Reform Bill, and no onecan seriously suggest that the addition of five seats redressed theinequality. According to the Census of 1831 the population of GreatBritain was little over sixteen millions, and that of Ireland was sevenand three-quarter millions. If these figures had formed the basis of aproportionate representation, Ireland would have had a little more than200 members--just about double the number which she actually returned. 

By an agreement between parties, as I have said, in the lastRedistribution of Seats Bill--that of 1885--the number ofrepresentatives of Ireland was left unchanged, and it is only since theConservative Party has definitely thrown in its lot as an opponent ofIrish demands as formulated to-day that this method of reducing theforce of their political opponents has begun to find favour amongst itsmembers: Under the Bill of Mr. Gerald Balfour, by an ingeniousarrangement of raising the limits of population under which boroughs andcounties should no longer have separate representation, the schemesecured the transfer of twenty-two seats from Ireland to Great Britain. 

The limit of population above which boroughs would have had to reach tomaintain their separate existence was fixed at 18, 500, and under thisarrangement three boroughs in Ireland and six in Great Britain wouldhave lost their seats. If the limit had been fixed at 25, 000 a total of19 seats in Great Britain and still only 3 in Ireland would have losttheir member, while a minimum population of 35, 000 would havedisfranchised 25 boroughs in Great Britain and only 4 in Ireland. 

The actual proposal was elaborately calculated so as to produce theleast possible disturbance to the small boroughs in Great Britain, whilesecuring the maximum of disfranchisement in Ireland. 

At the same time the standard of population per member, which in thecase of counties was fixed at 65, 000, secured the disfranchisement ofone Scottish county, the net disfranchisement of two English counties, and the deprivation of no less than 20 Irish counties of their member. 

The grant of a new member to Belfast would have made the net loss toIreland 22 seats, and these were to be redistributed as between England, Scotland and Wales in the proportion of 17:4:1. 

These, then, are the data upon which we have to reckon. The ConservativeGovernment, it should be added, greeted by a howl of disapproval evenfrom its own supporters at the anomalies which it proposed to leaveunredressed, appointed a Special Committee, the report of which was aposthumous child of the ministry which created it. 

It is true that according to the terms of this report the borough limitof population was raised to 25, 000, and the rotten boroughs which for"historical reasons" Mr. Balfour had been loth to disfranchise, were tobe swept away, but so far as we are concerned the results would havebeen much the same, for under its provisions Ireland would have suffereda net loss of 23 seats. 

O'Connell pointed out to the Corporation of Dublin in 1843 far greaterinconsistencies than can be indicated to-day. The population of Wales atthat day was 800, 000, that of County of Cork was more than 700, 000, butthe former was represented by 28 members and the latter by two; andfurther, he was able to point to five English counties with a totalpopulation of less than a million having 20 members to represent them, while five Irish counties with a population of over two millionsreturned only ten members. 

If it is the mere passion for a representation proportionate topopulation which is evinced, it is remarkable that it has only arisensince the time at which it began to tell against Ireland, that when theboot was on the other leg there was no suggestion of redistribution onthe part of Conservatives. The truth is that for Unionists the idea ofparing the claws of the Irish Party offers a tempting prospect. Ourposition in the matter is quite plain: so long as Great Britain insistson maintaining the Act of Union she must do so consistently in the sensethat it is a contract, albeit secured by chicanery, to the breach of anyterm of which the consent of the party which it trammelled at least isnecessary. It will be answered that the Disestablishment of the IrishChurch made a breach in a clause of as binding a solemnity as that whichguaranteed 100 members in the Imperial Parliament "for ever. " Thedifference is that in that case the consent of the two parties was givenby their representatives in the House of Commons, and the consent andthe sanction which it entails will never be secured--even possibly fromUlster Orangemen--to a proposal for the curtailment of representation inthe Imperial Parliament under the present system of government. 

We do not pretend for one moment that according to the rule of three weare not represented in the House of Commons by a number of membersgreater than that to which our population at the present moment would, taking the three kingdoms as whole, entitle us, but one must point outthat the system of electing representative peers robs us of even thatmodicum of democratic peers of Parliament which Great Britain is able tosecure, and we repeat the argument of Mr. Gladstone that the distance ofDublin from Westminster and the consequent deafness of the House ofCommons to Irish opinion is to a slight extent redressed by the smallexcess--calculated on lines of proportion--which Irish representationsecures at Westminster. 

At any rate one has the satisfaction of knowing where one stands in thematter, and one is aware that one part of the Conservative programme tobe applied whenever that party returns to power is that of which someonehas spoken as the detestable principle that to keep Ireland weak is themost convenient way of governing her. And here let me in parenthesisremark on one fact in the conditions of Irish representation--namely, its solidarity. It is one of the commonplaces of politics that office isthe best adhesive which a party can enjoy, and the cold shades ofopposition are apt too often to dissolve a unity which in officeappeared secure. We have seen it of late years in the demoralisation ofthe Liberals, who, after the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, fell to piecesas a party only on their resignation of office in 1895; we are seeing itnow in the disintegration of the Unionists ever since the debacle of thegeneral election. 

There is a term which the Unionist Press is never tired of using inconnection with the Irish Party, the "fissiparous tendency" of which itis passionately fond of dinning into English ears, regardless of themany cleavages which have occurred in English parties in the last fiftyor even twenty years. 

Those divisions which there have been in the Nationalist ranks have beenfor the most part concerned, not with measures, but with men, and evenso it cannot be urged that they have been more than temporary induration. The strength of wrist which has been displayed during the lasteight years by Mr. John Redmond in leading the United Irish Party hasbeen a source of admiration to all. "You need greater qualities, " saidCardinal de Retz, "to be a party leader than to be Emperor of theUniverse. " Much wisdom is demanded of an Irish leader in deciding thetactical questions arising from the vicissitudes of British parties. That Irish Nationalists and British Liberals do not see eye to eye onseveral points of policy is well known. It may well be urged that nobetter proof of the unnatural form of the polity which holds the fieldcan be adduced than is to be found in the political allies of the twoparties in Ireland; for the Catholics, democratic though they may be, are not associated with the party to which the traditions of a Church, the most Conservative force in Europe, one might think would ally them, and the Orange Presbyterians, who are at heart Radicals, are divorcedfrom their dissenting kinsmen in Great Britain and form the tail of theConservative Party. Hence it is that we have fallen between two stools, and University reform, to the principle of which Lord Salisbury, LordRandolph Churchill, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Wyndham have been pledged, was shelved over and over again at thebidding of the Ulster Unionists, while the Conservative House of Lordsthwarted the application of the principles of self-government to which aLiberal majority in the House of Commons gave its consent. Can anyone, in view of these facts, feel surprised that "a plague on both yourHouses" expresses the feelings of the Irish people. 

Those nice people, to whom political barter is abhorrent, who at thetime of the general election deprecated the "sale for a price" of theNationalist vote, for so they were pleased to call what occurred, closedtheir eyes to the very obvious price of the Orange vote in the lastParliament, which took the form of the retirement from office of Mr. Wyndham, on failure to secure which, as the Orange leaderdeclared--"Ulster would have to call upon her reserves, " meaning, onemust suppose, that the Irish Unionist office holders who were members ofthe Ministry in numbers altogether disproportionate to their strengthwould be called upon by the Orange Lodges to hand in their seals. 

English Catholics are apt to say that if the Irish people in England hadbeen directed by the Nationalist Party to vote for Conservativecandidates the safety of Catholic schools would thereby have beensafeguarded, but they forget that to put a Conservative Party in powerwould be to give a blank cheque to a party pledged to cut down theIrish, and _pari passu_ the Catholic, representation in the House ofCommons. That the fate of the Catholic voluntary schools in England is adirect concern of the Irish members is admitted by all who are awarehow vast a majority of the Catholic poor in Great Britain are Irish, ifnot by birth, at any rate by origin. 

That the efforts in this connection of the Irish Party were appreciatedby the head of the Catholic Church in England is seen by the verygracious letter which Archbishop Bourne addressed to Mr. Redmond at theend of the session of 1906, and it is significant that the letter ofprotest against the Archbishop's action in regard to the moderatecounsels to secure a compromise on the part of the Irish, which was sentby certain English Catholic Peers to the Catholic bishops of GreatBritain, was treated by the latter, with only two exceptions, with thecontumelious neglect which its disloyalty, the outcome of Tory_intransigeance_, deserved. 

English Catholics, among whom knights harbingers and banneret bearers ofthe Primrose League are numerous, who have leant all their weight in thescale to maintain the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland, have been everready when occasion arose to appeal to the religious loyalty of theIrish members to support their interests. Their position has not beenvery dignified, and its fruits will perhaps be seen if the reduction ofthe Irish representation enters the sphere of practical politics. Partyloyalty will claim their support, but at the same time they will realisethat if they give it they will be taking a step to reduce the only bodyin the House of Commons which can ever hope to represent Catholicprinciples and uphold Catholic interests. 

I do not know whether it struck many people in the course of the generalelection that the country in which the elections made the leastdifference was the one of the three kingdoms in which politics claimmost public attention. There was a monotony in the unopposed returns, and, in the result, in the place of 80 Nationalists, 1 Liberal, and 22Unionists, there appeared 83 Nationalists, 3 Liberals, and 18 Unionists, To appreciate the full force of these numbers one must realise, moreover, that of the Unionists in both cases, two out of the totalrepresent University seats, the Conservative nature of which, whether inEngland, Ireland, or Scotland, is one of the features of political lifewhich is, it appears, immutable. A study of the results shows thatUnionism is in a minority in Ulster. There are in the present Parliament15 Unionists as against 15 Nationalists, who, with 3 Liberals, go tomake up the 33 members sitting at Westminster for that province. 

These figures relieve me from the necessity of entering a caveat againstthe use of the word Ulster as though the whole province were Unionist. Virtually, all that is Unionist in Ireland is in Ulster, but it is veryfar from the truth to say that all Ulster is Unionist. Not one of theCounties of Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, or Cavan, out of the whole nineof which the province consists, returns a Unionist. In the threeCounties of Down, Armagh, and Fermanagh, the representation is divided, and as for the two Counties of Londonderry and Antrim, which areordinarily the sole strongholds of the Orangemen, even in them a breachwas effected in West Belfast, where the Labour vote returned aNationalist for the first time since Mr. Sexton sat for it from1886-1892. 

The obviousness and permanence of the Irish representation in Parliamentis apt to cause its significance to be forgotten. "It doesn't matterwhat we say, but for God's sake _let_ us be consistent, " Lord Palmerstonis reported to have said concerning some question of policy at a CabinetCouncil. The Irish people, its worst enemies must admit, have beenconsistent for the last thirty years in the demands which theirrepresentatives have made ever since Isaac Butt crystallised the Irishantagonism to the _status quo_ in the "Home Government Association, "which he formed and on the programme of which he returned, after thegeneral election of 1874, with 59 followers in the House of Commons, pledged to support the demand for Irish self-government. If we excludethe fact that the extension of the franchise in 1884 increased thenumber of the popular representatives to more than 80, it is true to saythat since then there has been no change in the position of Irishrepresentation, just as there has been none in Irish demands. TheLiberalism of Non-conformist Wales, and to a lesser degree ofPresbyterian Scotland, are traditional, but their adherence to one sideor the other in politics appears vacillating if one studies the electionfigures, compared with the unwavering permanence of the Irish returns. When Lord Dudley declared that his aim as Viceroy would be to governIreland according to Irish ideas a shout of protest arose from the_Times_ and the Irish Unionists, whose organ the _Times_ has constituteditself. Let us clear our minds of cant on the matter, and ask in view ofthis open disclaimer of the democratic principles which are so muchvaunted in England, for what reason is maintained the travesty ofrepresentative government, the decrees of which it is frankly avowed areto be ignored? Every English Liberal must be impressed by the fact thatthe party which has tried to arrogate to itself the sole claim to bethought Imperialist has scouted Home Rule resolutions passed again andagain by the legislatures of every one of the self-governing colonies. It was at Montreal that Parnell was first hailed as the uncrowned kingof Ireland, and what is more, that great apostle of Imperialism, CecilRhodes, so far from seeing in Home Rule the first step towards thedismemberment of the Empire, signified his sympathy with the movement inthat direction by giving Mr. Parnell a cheque for £10, 000 for the IrishParty funds on the one condition that he would support the retention ofsome of the Irish members in the Imperial Parliament, as tending in thedirection of Imperial federation. 

Twenty years ago, when the present good feelings of England towards theUnited States were not in existence, it was easy, as it has been sinceon the occasions on which relations have been strained over theVenezuelan and Alaskan questions, to denounce the aid granted to theNational movement by the Irish in America. To-day things are different;these denunciations are not heard, and, moreover, as much aid andencouragement has been forthcoming in a proportional degree from thecolonies of the British Empire as from the Republic of North America. Asa matter of fact there are twice as many people of Irish blood in theUnited States as there are in Ireland, and thus, when in 1880 Congressthrew open its doors and invited Parnell to address it on the Irishquestion, it was acting in accordance with the sentiments of a vastnumber of the citizens of the United States. 

The Government of Lord North roused the American Colonies by attempts torule them against their own wishes, and the result was that they securedtheir independence. Austria refused self-government to Italy, and inconsequence lost its Italian territory, while Hungary, to which itgranted the boon, was retained in the dual monarchy. Spain, by refusingautonomy to her colonies, suffered the loss of South. America, Cuba, Puerto Rica, and the Philippines, and the action of Holland in the sameway led to the separation from it of the kingdom of the Belgians. 

All these are cases in point, but the most interesting parallel is thatof Lower Canada, which, like Ireland, is Celtic and Catholic, and is, moreover, a French-speaking province. There, too, there was a strugglebetween races, and it was only by "merging"--as Lord Durham expressedit--"the odious animosities of origin in the feelings of a nobler andmore comprehensive nationality" that peace was restored. The ToryCabinet of Peel gave Canada Parliamentary Government, and proclaimedrebels became Ministers of the Crown, and who is there who will contendthat the application of the maxim "trust in the people" of that greatImperial statesman, Lord Durham, was not justified by the results of thegrant of self-government not to a peaceful and loyal colony, but to onewhich was boiling with discontent and rebellion. Twelve years after LordDurham's experiment, the Government of Lord Derby gave Australia similarinstitutions, and that fact alone shows how successful the policy hadproved. Great Britain has just given representative government to theTransvaal and the Orange River Colony. Within five years of the peace ofVereeniging the pledges of that compact were honourably fulfilled inspite of the forebodings of one of the political parties, and LouisBotha, the Premier of one of the new colonies, is the most distinguishedof the generals who less than six years ago were leading their armiesagainst those of Great Britain. 

England has realised that it is only by government with the consent ofthe governed that she can maintain her colonies, and the contrastbetween her treatment of Ireland and that of her colonies is to be seenin the fact that to them is extended the protection of the Britishfleet, while they are at the same time left free to legislate in thematter of trade, to deal with their own defence, and all the whilecontribute nothing to Imperial charges. 

The failure of the policy of North and the success of that of Durham areapparent. The former has been applied in Ireland, although the countryhas consistently cried out for the latter. How long do those with whomthe last word in government is the policy applied to-day, imagine thatthey can govern a country at the bayonet's edge in such a way that shehas neither the weight of an equal nor the freedom of a dependency? LordRosebery, whose liberalism may be described in the same terms as thosein which Disraeli denounced the Conservatism of Peel--"the mule ofpolitics which engenders nothing"--has more than once in the last fewyears declared his hostility to the principle of Irish self-government, and the explanation of his position which he offers is that the absenceof loyalty on the part of Ireland is the obstacle which stands in theway of his advocacy of such a policy. One may well ask in reply whetherLord Rosebery is aware of the complete absence of loyalty at the timewhen Canada was granted self-government, and the state of feelingtowards England in the new South African colonies two years ago is afurther case in point; but the most pertinent question which can beasked of Lord Rosebery is on what ground he makes this his conditionprecedent, in view of the fact that the loyalty or disloyalty ofIrishmen stands exactly as it did in 1886 and 1893, in both of whichyears Lord Rosebery was a member of the Ministries which introduced HomeRule Bills into Parliament. 

That hostility is evinced by large sections of Irishmen to England, aswell as by Englishmen to Ireland, and that much sympathy was felt, as itwas by the most distinguished of the members of the present Cabinet, forthe South African Republics, which Irishmen regarded as strugglingnationalities like their own, I am not concerned to deny. The samefeeling of hostility, as I have already said, was rampant at the time ofthe Crimean war, and may be expected to continue till the end of thepresent system of government arrives; but to those who, for partypurposes, declare that they see a risk that possible Europeancomplications would be accentuated for Great Britain to the point ofdanger by the proximity of an Ireland with a Parliament in Dublin, theanswer is, that it is difficult to conceive a state of affairs morefraught with danger to England than would be found in the existenceduring a great war of an adjacent island which has been haughtily deniedthat mode of government which she claims, and which in the troubles ofthe other country will see an opportunity of extracting by threats andfrom fear in an hour of peril that which she was unable to secure byother means in the day of prosperity. One may well ask whether thisprospect is one to which Great Britain can look forward with calmness, that she should have to legislate at fever heat to cope with thecontingencies of the moment with no well-ordered scheme of things; notthat way lies an end by which she will secure peace conceived in thespirit of peace. 

CHAPTER IX

IRELAND AND GREAT BRITAIN

 "In reason all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery; but in fact eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt.... Those who have used to cramp liberty have gone so far as to resent even the liberty of complaining, although a man upon the rack was never known to be refused the liberty of roaring as loud as he thought fit. "--JONATHAN SWIFT. 

The loss of her language by Ireland was, politically, the worst calamitywhich could have befallen her, for it lent colour to the otherwiseunsupported assertion that she was a mere geographical expression in noway differing from the adjoining island. The manner in which the revivalof the Irish tongue has been taken up by the whole country with, literally, the support of peasant and peer is one of the most remarkablephenomena of modern Irish life. That it has any direct politicalsignificance is untrue, for the aim of its pioneers in the Gaelic Leaguehas been fulfilled, and it remains strictly non-sectarian andnon-political. From the purely utilitarian point of view, no doubt apolytechnic could provide a dozen subjects in which a more profitablereturn could be made for the money and time invested than does the studyof Gaelic, but book-keeping or shorthand would not have roused theenthusiasm which this revival of a half dead language has evoked andwhich is incidentally an educative movement in that the learning of anew language is of a direct value as a mental training, while as asocial organisation it has done more in inculcating a public spirit anda proper pride than could otherwise possibly have been achieved. Therevival of the Czech language when almost dead, at the beginning of thenineteenth century, and the eminent success of bi-lingualism inFlanders, are hopeful signs for the preservation of a Nationalcharacteristic, the disappearance of which would have been welcomed onlyby those who hold that Ireland as a nationality has no existence apartfrom Great Britain, and the preservation of which will produce themental alertness characteristic of a bi-lingual people. 

The temperance work done by the Gaelic League in providing occupation ofa pleasant nature and social intercourse of a harmless kind is one ofits chief titles to distinction, for in this aspect it has encouragedthe preservation of Irish songs, music, dances, and games. One otherthing it, and it alone, can do. One-half of the emigrants from Irelandgo on tickets or money sent from friends in the United States, and in myopinion one of the most powerful influences in staying the presentlamentable tide in that direction will be to foster in the branches inAmerica the notion that the time has come when every Irishman and womanwho can by any possible means do so should be persuaded to remain inIreland, and not to emigrate. 

The ridiculous situation which was allowed by successive Governments topersist in the Gaelic-speaking districts of the West until a few yearsago, in which teachers were appointed to the schools without anyknowledge of the only language spoken by the children whom theypurported to educate, is well illustrated by the statement on the partof one of their number to the effect that it took two years toextirpate, to "wring" the Irish speech out of the children and replaceit, one must suppose, by English, and this process, it must beremembered, was gone through with the children of a peasantry whom adistinguished French publicist--M. L. Paul-Dubois--has described asperhaps the most intellectual in Europe. 

It is characteristic of English government that, whereas from 1878onwards Irish figured in the programme of the National Board, andGovernment grants were made for proficiency therein as in othersubjects, one of the last acts of the late Government was to withdrawthese grants for the teaching of Irish. So long as there was no largenumber of people anxious to learn Gaelic in Ireland, Government gavehelp towards its study, but the very moment in which, with the rise ofthe Gaelic League, the number learning the language began to increase, Government put its foot down and proceeded to discourage it by awithdrawal of grants. The order effecting this was withdrawn by Mr. Bryce. The signal failure of the attempts made to kill the Gaelicmovement with ridicule, on the part of those who saw in it anevil-disposed attempt to stop the Anglicising of the country, was asconspicuous as has been the ill success of the petty tyranny of theInland Revenue authorities, who took out summonses against those who hadtheir names engraved on their dogs' collars in Gaelic. Trinity Collegehas had for half a century two scholarships and a prize in Gaelicattached to its Divinity School, and the fact that the ultimate trust ofthe fund of its Gaelic Professorship on cesser of appointment is to aProtestant proselytising society shows the interest which has actuatedthe study of Gaelic in that foundation, and its attitude towards theGaelic League found expression in Dr. Mahaffy, one of its mostdistinguished scholars, who, having failed to kill the movement withridicule, changed his line and declared that the revival of Gaelic wouldbe unreasonable and dishonest if it were not impossible. 

In spite of this, the success of the League, which was only establishedin 1893, is astonishing. In 1900 it consisted of 120 branches; to-daythere are more than 1, 000. The circulation of Gaelic books publishedunder its auspices is over 200, 000 a year. In the year 1899 it wastaught in 100 Primary Schools, it is now taught in 3, 000. 

The number of people, including adults, learning Irish in eveningcontinuation classes was in 1899 little over 1, 000, and is to-day over100, 000. 

The circumstance that in London on the Sunday nearest St. Patrick's Daya service with Gaelic hymns and a Gaelic sermon is conducted every year, and has been conducted for the last three years, at the Cathedral atWestminster, and is attended by 6, 000 or 7, 000 Irish people, and thatlast year Dr. Alexander held a Gaelic service in a Protestant Cathedralin Dublin, should do much to show the manner in which the movement isspreading among all classes, and to indicate that it will in timedemolish that false situation by which, for the greater part of theContinent, Ireland has been looked upon as merely an island on the otherside of England to be seen through English glasses. 

That strange recuperative power which the country has evinced atintervals in her history is, without a doubt, once again assertingitself, and a new spirit of restlessness and of effort, which in nosense can be supposed to supplant, or to do more than to supplement, political aspirations, is making itself felt. 

It is doing so in a number of different directions, but the ultimate aimof all the forces which are at work may be said to be, in a cant phrase, to make it as much an object to desire to live in the country ashitherto it has been to die for it. 

The inculcation of a spirit of self-reliance, the discouragement amongthe poorer classes of the notion that emigration is an object at whichone should aim, the destruction among the richer of that spirit which isknown at "West British, " and which implies an apologetic air on the partof its owner for being Irish at all, these are among the effects of thenew movement. 

The desire to see Ireland Irish, and not a burlesque of what is English, is its _raison d'être_, and that it has made progress along the linesmapped out, the Gaelic League, from which it gains its driving force, the literary revival, and the movement for industrial development bearample witness. 

From the impression made by a few wits, English people have jumped tothe conclusion that as a people we are specially blessed with a sense ofhumour, a curious _non sequitur_ which the restraint, consciously orunconsciously inculcated by the Gaelic League, is likely to make moreapparent, for it is killing that conception of the Irishman as typicallya boisterous buffoon with intervals of maudlin sentimentality which thestage and the popular song have so long been content to depict withoutprotest from us, and which left Englishmen with feelings not moreexalted than those of their sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors, to whom "mere Irish" was a term of opprobrium. 

In their appeals to sentiment, Englishmen have not been more successful. The appointment of Mr. Wyndham to the Irish Office was hailed by them asa certain success on the ground of his descent from Lord EdwardFitzgerald, a traitor, on their own showing, descent from whom one wouldhave thought should have been rather concealed than advertised. Theywaxed sentimental over the bravery of the Irish soldiers in the SouthAfrican war, among which the achievements of the Inniskillings atPieter's Hill and the Connaught Rangers at Colenso were only surpassedby the Dublin Fusiliers at Talana Hill, out of a thousand of whom onlythree hundred survived. But the strange thing was that while Englishpeople in honour of these men wore shamrock on St. Patrick's Day, justas in the case of the Crimea, the sympathy of their own country was noton the side upon which they fought, and the people of their countrylooked upon the Irish soldiers as _condottieri_ fighting in an aliencause. One cannot draw up an indictment against a whole nation, and ifthis be treason in the opinion of Englishmen, one can only reply that tocommit the unpardonable sin against the body politic there must besomething more on the part of a people than a continuance of feelingstowards a state of affairs against which they have always protested, andin which they have never acquiesced. 

Historically we have been the home of lost causes, and the fact that somany of the national heroes of Ireland have ended their lives in failurehas had no small effect in bringing it to pass that there, at any rate, it is not true to say that nothing succeeds like success. Hugh O'Neill, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Owen Roe O'Neill, Sarsfield, Wolfe Tone, Grattan, the Young Irelanders, O'Connell, Butt, Parnell, not one of these endedhis career amid the glamour of achieved success, and the result of this, I think, is an irresponsibility which looks not so much to theprobability of the fruition of movements as to their inception; and, after all, a flash in the pan is apt to do more harm than good. 

To this fact I attribute the circumstance that there has always been asmall section of the population to which the ordinary methods ofconstitutional agitation have appeared feeble and unavailing, but tounderstand to the full the reason for it one must realise that if therehave been three insurrections in the history of the United Parliament, there has twelve times in the same course of time been famine, thatparent of despairing violence, throughout the country. 

The ordinary Englishman seeing in the state a polity maintained by along tradition, which has undergone change gradually and in measuredprogress, in which agitation, when it has been rife as it was before thefirst Reform Bill, has died down on redress of grievances, almost assoon as it has arisen has no conception of the relative, and indeedabsolute, unstable state of equilibrium in the affairs of Ireland. 

The fact that one has to go back to the battle of Sedgemoor for the lastoccasion when in anything dignified by a higher name than riot, bloodhas been shed in England; the fact that when a retiring EnglishAttorney-General appointed his son to a third-rate position in the legalprofession an outcry arose in which the salient feature was surprisethat so flagrant a job should have been perpetrated, are indications ofwhat I mean when I say that English people are in every circumstance oftheir outlook precluded from eliminating in their view of Irish affairsthat deep-seated conviction, which in the case of their own country isfounded on indisputable fact, that radical change in the well-orderedevolution of the State is out of keeping with the sequence which hashitherto held sway, and in so far as it is so is a thing to be guardedagainst and avoided. 

In Ireland no one can claim to see a similar gradual metamorphosis inthe light-of the history of the last one hundred, or even fifty, years, Radicalism, experimentalism, empiricism have been let loose on everyinstitution of the country, and it is only when we take the greatestcommon measure of the results that we can see that the upshot has beenon the whole rather good than bad. When Parnell declared that whileaccepting Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals he must nevertheless statedefinitely that no one could set a limit to the march of a nation, hewas stating an axiom which is every day illustrated by English statesmenof either party when they say, on the one hand, that the refusal, and onthe other hand the concession, of certain fiscal proposals will lead tothe dismemberment of the Empire. What can be stated in cold blood as apossible contingency in the case of, say, Canada or New Zealand has onlyto be adumbrated in that of Ireland to be denounced, not as ajustifiable retort to the flouting of local demands, but as atreasonable aspiration to be put down with a strong hand. 

The new aspect of Imperial responsibility as entailing on the mothercountry a position not of contempt of, but rather of deference to, thewishes of the colonies cannot but have a direct bearing on Anglo-Irishrelations. 

It is the greatest feature in Parnell's achievement that he succeeded inpersuading ardent spirits to lay aside other weapons, while he strovewhat he could do by stretching the British Constitution to the utmost, linking up as he did all the forces of discontent to a methodical use ofthe Parliamentary machine. In the very depth of the winter of ourdiscontent, in 1881, when he was in Kilmainham Gaol, crime became mostrampant; in truth--as he had grimly said would be the case--CaptainMoonlight had taken his place, and in the following year when he was letout of gaol it was expressly to slow down the agitation. More than onePrime Minister has had to echo those words of the Duke of Wellington ofseventy years ago--"If we don't preserve peace in Ireland we shall notbe a Government, " and the periodic recrudescence of lawlessness whichthe island has seen has, it is freely admitted, forced the hands ofGovernments which were inflexible in the face of mere constitutionalopposition. 

The latest aspect which this anti-constitutional movement has taken inIreland is what is known as Sinn Féin, which adopts a rigid attitude ofprotest against the existing condition of things, and which declaresthat the recognition of the _status quo_ involved in any acquiescence inthe present mode of government is a betrayal of the whole position. Theexistence of this spirit, which is entirely negligible outside two orthree large towns, is not surprising; although it advocates a passiveresistance it is the direct descendant of the party which advocatedphysical force in the past, and in so far as it proposes to use morallydefensible weapons it is likely to have the more driving power. Theconsistent opposition which the Catholic Church offered to revolutionaryviolence and her sympathy with constitutionally-expressed Parliamentaryagitation have resulted in an anti-clerical colour which this newmovement has acquired, and to this, force is added by the measure ofstrength which it has gained among a certain number of young Protestantsin Belfast, whose fathers must turn in their graves at this reversal ofopinion on a question which was to them a _chose jugée_, a veritablearticle of faith. The proposals of Sinn Féin include a boycott of allEnglish institutions in Ireland, educational and of other kinds, theabandonment of the attendance of Irish members in the ImperialParliament at Westminster, elections to which Sinn Féin candidates are, if necessary, to contest on the undertaking that if elected they willnot take the oath at Westminster, but will attend a self-constitutedNational Council in Dublin, under the control of which a system ofNational education and of National arbitration courts, in addition to aNational Stock Exchange, will be established. To develop Irishindustries this body, it is suggested, will appoint in foreign portsIrish Consuls, completely independent of the British Consular service, who will attend to the interests and the development of Irish trade. Lastly, the most practical of their proposals lies in the discouragementof recruiting, a movement which, if applied on a large scale, would havea remarkable effect on the resources of the three kingdoms under avoluntary system of military service. 

These proposals, which, until a Gaelic name was thought necessary fortheir acceptance in Ireland, were known as the Hungarian policy, areadmittedly based on the success of the struggle for Hungarian autonomywhich culminated in 1867, but the fact which the advocates of theapplication of this policy to Ireland omit to mention, is that Hungarywas face to face with a divided and distracted Austria, defeated by thePrussians at Sadowa, while in the case of Ireland we are concerned witha united Great Britain, which has shown no great signs of diminution inher power. A closer parallel than that of Hungary is to be found in thecase of Bohemia, which, in respect of general social conditions and theproportion of national to hostile forces, bore a much strongerresemblance to Ireland, and which adopted in 1867 a policy of withdrawalof its representatives from a hostile legislature with results sodisastrous that after a few years she returned to the methods which theSinn Féin party are anxious to make an end of in Ireland. 

All foreign parallels, however, are apt to be misleading, but Irishmenhave only to remember the fact that the secession of Grattan and hisfollowers from the Irish Parliament in 1797 paved the way for thepassing of the Act of Union to find in it a warning against what is themain plank in the platform of Sinn Féin--"the policy ofwithdrawal"--which, moreover, would leave the control of Irishlegislation to the tender mercies of such Irish members as Mr. WalterLong and Mr. William Moore, which would further involve the condemnationof the policy pursued by every Irish leader since the Union, and wouldmean the abandonment of the weapon by which every Irish reform has beenwrested from English prejudice--namely, an independent party in theHouse of Commons, backed up by a vigorous organisation in Ireland. 

For the rest, those who have read the high-flown manifestoes of the SinnFéin party will be concerned to look around for the result of theproposal which they have been preaching for the last three years, and ifthey find nothing but a ridiculous mouse in the matter of achievementwill be inclined to declare that not a mountain but a molehill has beenin labour. It is a singular fact that although since the generalelection there have been no less than ten by-elections in Ireland, ofwhich only two were in "safe" Unionist seats, in no single instance havethe advocates of the policy of abstention from attendance fromWestminster had the courage to go to the polls with a candidate oftheir own. We are told by the exponents of the new policy that they aresweeping the country before them, but the only certain data whichIrishmen have as to its popularity is that in ten per cent. Of theconstituencies in the country, the only ones to which any test has beenapplied, in no instance has Sinn Féin dared to show its face at thehustings. 

Two Irish members, it is true, resigned uncompromisingly from the IrishParty and joined the new organisation in disgust at the scope of theIrish Council Bill. Sir Thomas Esmonde, who expressed his intention ofresigning, was, with what it must have come to regret as indecent haste, elected a member of the Sinn Féin organisation, but within a few weeksdeclared his willingness "to act with the Parliamentary Party, or anyother set of men who put the National question in the forefront, " andwent on to express his opinion that the chances of a Sinn Féin candidatein his constituency of North Wexford would be nil. 

So far at any rate Sinn Féiners must admit that "_beacoup de bruit, pende fruit_" sums up their action in regard to Irish affairs. Any successin propagandism which they may have achieved is to be traced to anatural impatience, especially among _dilletante_ politicians, whoseexperience is purely academic, at the slowness of the Parliamentarymachine in effecting reforms, but any force which it possesses isdiscounted by the fact that men whose views are extreme in youth tend tobecome the most moderate with advancing years--a fact of which a classicexample is to be found in the career of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, one ofthe most distinguished of the Young Irelanders, who, after a brilliantcareer in Australia, returned to European his old age and spent severalyears in the attempt to persuade Conservatives to adopt the policy ofHome Rule--a propaganda on his part to which the episode of LordCarnarvon bears witness, and which was advocated by him in the_National_ and _Contemporary Reviews_ in 1884 and 1885. It may well bethat the political groundlings who are at present the backbone of theSinn Féin movement will, when they gain political experience, altertheir views in as complete a manner. One can draw an English parallel tothis movement in Ireland. There are in the former, as in the latter, country a certain limited number of people who hold extreme politicalviews, which in the case of the English are pure socialism. The Englishextremists have been so far successful as to secure the return of oneMember of Parliament in full sympathy with their aspirations. The Irishextremists have not so far dared to put to the test their chance ofobtaining even one Parliamentary ewe lamb. Without the advantage whichthe English _intransigeants_ possess, of a few weeks' knowledge on thepart of one person of the inside working of Parliamentary government, inexactly the same manner as do the Englishmen of the same type, theseIrishmen spend their time reviling popular representatives as ignorant, venal, and beneath contempt. A prophet who, on the basis of the electionof Mr. Grayson, foretold an imminent dissolution of the democraticforces in Great Britain, would in truth have more ground on which tobase his forecast than has one who from the nebulous movements of theSinn Féin party, arrives at an analogous conclusion in the case ofIreland. That the political landmarks in Ireland have in the last fewyears shifted is obvious to the most superficial observer. Thedevolutionist secession from orthodox Unionism, the Independent OrangeLodge represented by Mr. Sloan, the "Russellite" Ulster tenant-farmers, and the rise of a democratic vote in Belfast regardless of the strife ofsects, all serve as indications of this fact; but let it be noted thatwhile we have evidences in these directions of the forces at work in thedisintegration of the old Orange strongholds, we have no such obviousindications of the upheaval going on in the traditional NationalistParty, save only the mere _ipse dixit_ of the very people who assure usthat they themselves are making it felt. There is every reason tosuppose that the Sinn Féin movement, in so far as it consists of passiveresistance, will be regarded by the Irish people as merely doingnothing. They could understand a non-Parliamentary action were itreplaced by physical force, and the weakness of passive resistance liesprecisely in this, that the logical result of its failure is an appealto armed revolt which no man in his senses can in modern conditions inIreland think possible, or, if possible, calculated to be other thandisastrous. The attempt which the Sinn Féin organisation hasconsistently, if unsuccessfully, made to arrogate to itself all creditfor the progress of the Gaelic League and of the Industrial Revival, issingularly disingenuous in view of the assistance which both thosemovements have received and are receiving from the Parliamentary Partyand its allies. The provisions of the Merchandise Marks Act, and thefact that through the agency of members of the Irish Party the ForeignOffice has directed British Consuls abroad to publish separately thereturns of Irish imports, which have hitherto been lost by theirinclusion in the returns under the one head "British, " will do far morefor the development of the Irish export trade than the well-meaning butacademic resolutions of their critics; and in the matter of socialreform I have yet to learn that any body of men have done such good workfor their country as have the Irish members by the passing into law, ontheir initiative, of the Labourers Act, by which nearly half a millionof the Irish population will be rescued from conditions of life which, with a population lacking the religious sense of the Irish poor, wouldhave resulted in absolute moral degradation. 

I have spoken throughout of the exponents of Sinn Féin as of a party, but it is difficult to find the common measure of agreement which sucha term connotes in the heterogeneous elements which for the moment callthemselves by the same name. We read of old Fenians, who have everhankered after physical force, presiding over meetings to expoundpassive resistance in which young Republicans from Belfast rub shoulderswith men whose ideal is vaguely expressed as repeal--a return one mustsuppose to that anomalous constitution of Grattan's Parliament in which, while the legislature was independent the Executive was not responsiblethereto, but went out of office with the Ministry in the Parliament atWestminster. 

Irish Parliamentary candidates are selected under a system in which theparty caucus has far less share than in any part of the three kingdoms. They have behind them the credentials of popular election which are notpossessed by a single one of the self-constituted group of critics whoassail them; and one need only say that vague, unfounded charges as topolitical probity, in no instance substantiated by a single shred ofproof, do not redound to the credit of those who frame them. 

When the advocates of Sinn Féin can point to a record of services asdisinterested and as consistent as those of the Irish ParliamentaryParty, when they can produce evidence of work in the immediate past asfruitful for the good of their country as the Labourers Act, the TownTenants Act, and the Merchandise Marks Act, they will have some groundupon which to claim a hearing from their countrymen. Till then they haveno cause to throw stones at those who are honestly working for the goodof their country, although they do not proclaim themselves on thehousetops the only patriotic section of the Irish people. 

Not one of the advocates of this bloodless war which they propose has, so far as I am aware, in spite of three years spent in preaching on thesubject, refused to pay income tax, the only tax resistance to which ispossible in Ireland. Those who hold Civil Service appointments under theBritish Crown have not in a single instance, unless I am mistaken, handed in their resignations. These are the criticisms which theyinevitably draw down on their heads by stooping to make imputations asto men whose services to the country should put them above reach ofanything of the kind. Within the last few months two of the leaders ofSinn Féin appeared, in the course of a few weeks--the one as plaintiff, the other as defendant--represented by a Tory counsel, in the FourCourts in Dublin, before a member of a foreign judiciary, which on theirfundamental axiom should be taboo. The reason is to be found, perhaps, in the fact that they have not yet devised a means by which attachmentand committal for contempt of their proposed amateur tribunals will bemade effectual. The method by which the resolutions of the NationalCouncil are to be carried into effect has not yet been explained, norhave the means by which they will acquire a sanction in so far as theirbreach will involve the offender in a punishment. We have yet to learnwhat guarantee there is that the consuls in foreign parts, whom theypropose to establish and maintain by voluntary subscription, will begiven any facilities by the countries in which they are stationed, without which their presence in those foreign countries would be of noservice whatever. 

Half a century ago a great voluntary effort, which may well be calledSinn Féin, was made in the foundation of the Catholic University inDublin. In spite of the glamour of John Henry Newman's name it wascrippled from the fact of the poverty of the country on the voluntarycontributions of which it had to depend. One may well ask if theexponents of the new policy have any confidence that the same obstaclewill not stand in the way of more than a trivial fraction of theirextensive, and as I think Utopian, proposals. The No Rent Manifestofell flat in the midst of the very bitterest struggle of the land war. Does anyone think it likely that we shall see behind the doctrinaires ofthe Sinn Féin group a country united in cold blood to repudiate itsobligations under the Land Purchase and Labourers' Acts?

The Irish people are under no illusions as to the advocates of SinnFéin, and will, I am convinced, refuse to judge it on its own valuation. If for no other reason its exponents would be suspect in that they havenot scrupled to assure a sympathetic Orange audience of the fact thatthey are on the point of rending asunder the allegiance of Ireland tothe National cause. While protesting aloud their patriotism they havenot thought it incompatible with their declarations to flood the columnsof the Unionist Press--the most hostile to the democracy of theircountry--with expositions of their views, coupled with stridentdenunciations of their Nationalist opponents. 

Their tirades have been received with open arms by the Orangemen asaffording a weapon in the division of their common enemy, by which maybe maintained that _de facto_, if not _de jure_, ascendancy, which inspite of the ballot, the extended franchise, and local government, persists in Ireland. But, on the other hand, as has been well said, thefact is not lost on the great bulk of the Irish people that it is fromthe Sinn Féin section--the little coterie which professes to stand forevery sort of idealism--that all the imputations and innuendoes havecome. 

This extreme school, of course, will in no sense be pleased byameliorative legislation as applied by this or any other Government, because the worse England treats Ireland the stronger will be theirposition, and every concession gained by the country is so much groundcut from under their feet; but the policy of refusing all attempts atpiecemeal improvement, on the ground that a complete reversal of theexisting system is called for, may be magnificent, and on this theremust be two opinions, but it is not practical politics which willcommend itself to the ordinary Irishman. "Men, " wrote Edmund Burke morethan a hundred years ago, "do not live upon blotted paper; thefavourable or the unfavourable mind of the rulers is of more consequenceto a nation than the black letter of any statute. " Irish people are notlikely to fail to realise this, and the experience of the past is suchas to show that remedial legislation has been powerless to stay theNational demand, and concessions, so far from putting a period to theappeals of the people for the control of their own affairs, have ratherincreased the vehemence of their demand, for with democracy, as withmost things, _l'appétit vient en mangeant_. 

As against the body which we have been considering one hears peoplespeaking of the liberal school of Unionists--the rise of which is somarked a product of recent years in Ireland--as a body who represent themoderate section of opinion, the demands of which are reasonable andcomprise all that the Liberal Party can be expected to concede; andamong this section of recent writers on Irish politics three stand outprominently by reason of their position and of their proposals:--Mr. T. W. Russell, in "Ireland and the Empire, " preached with cogent forcethe need for the last step in the expropriation of the Irish landlords, the one great obstacle, in his eyes, to a prosperous and contentedIreland. In the economic field Sir Horace Plunkett has pleaded, in"Ireland in the New Century, " for the salvation of the Irish race by thedevelopment of industries; while in the political sphere Lord Dunraven, in "The Outlook in Ireland, " has urged the pressing need for the closerassociation of Irishmen with the government of their own country. I amnot concerned to deny the remarkable fact which these volumes indicatein the change of view on the part of three representative Protestant andUnionist Irishmen; but in this connection two things, on whichsufficient stress has not so far been laid, must be recalled. In thefirst place the members of what is called the middle party are recruitsnot from Nationalism but from Unionism; it is some of the members of thelatter party who have abated their vehemence, and not any of those ofthe former who have altered their orientation in respect of greatdemocratic principles. 

To speak of the new school of opinion as a party, moreover, is tooverstate the case as to the relative positions of three small groups ofUnionist opinion, which have little or nothing in common except a jointdenunciation of the present _régime_. 

The views of Mr. Russell with regard to compulsory purchase are not, onesuspects, those of Lord Dunraven. Lord Dunraven's views as toDevolution, it may be surmised, are too democratic for Sir HoracePlunkett, and are not sufficiently democratic for Mr. Russell. It isimpossible to conceive a plan of reform which would enjoy the support ofall these three while the ideas of ameliorative work entertained by thebody of Orangemen led by Mr. Sloan, who are disgusted by the attitudetraditionally attached to their order, would, there is no doubt, differfrom those of any others. It would be impossible to find a commondenominator between the views of these modern converts from the oldUnionism which presented an unbending refusal to every demand for reformand held as sacrosanct the existing state of affairs, constitutional andsocial. 

That the numbers of the moderate Unionists of all sections are atpresent small is not surprising. The country has too long been governedas a dependency, with the Protestant gentry as the _oculus reipublicae_, for the "garrison" readily to waive that which they have come to lookupon as their inalienable heritage. That the numbers of Orangemen willgrow small by degrees as a result of land purchase is the generalbelief; but it must not be forgotten that the more violent among them, in their efforts to rake the ashes; and blow up the cinders of deadprejudices and extinguished hate, will have the backing of a powerfulPress, the eagerness of the greatest organ of which in this matter inthe past led to the worst blow its prestige has ever endured. Liberalstatesmen during the recent general election were constrained to callattention to the manner in which the power of the Press had beenexploited by a few persons who had endeavoured to secure a "corner" inthose sources of political education, and the obviousness of the policy, it was admitted, did something to defeat its own ends. Of one thing wemay be certain, the Orange drum will be beaten once more, for the oldascendancy spirit will die hard; all the devices of artificialrespiration will be called in to prolong its life, and when it doesbreathe its last one may expect it to do so in the arms of its friendsin an attic in Printing House Square. 

One can only hope that the "ultras" will pitch their tone too high, andthat their efforts to revive the old perverse antipathies will fail, sothat Irish Unionists will realise, as some of them are doing already, that patriotism, like charity, begins at home, and that they cannotcompound for distrust of their own countrymen by loud-voicedprotestations of loyalty to the blessings of British rule. 

It was very generally admitted that the logical outcome of Mr. Wyndham'sLand Act was an Irish authority to stand between the Irish tenant andthe British Exchequer, which, under the Act, is left in the invidiousposition of an absentee landlord to people who dislike its ascendancyand distrust its administrative methods, while an Irish authority with adirect interest in the transaction would be able to see that paymentswere punctually made. In the not very likely contingency of failure todo this, under the Act as passed, the remedy which lies, is for theTreasury to stop administrative payments to local bodies, an actionwhich would bring Government to a standstill and plunge the countryinto disaffection. Mr. T. W. Russell has long advocated the creation atWestminster of a Grand Committee of Irish members to deal with theEstimates and with Irish legislation; and, as if there were not aplethora of proposals for the modification of the present system ofGovernment, the plans of the Irish Reform Association have for the lastthree years been before the country. 

The object of their first proposal is the creation of a FinancialCouncil to which the control of Irish expenditure should be handed bythe Treasury with the object of making it interested in economising infinance for Irish purposes. 

Their proposal with regard to Private Bill Legislation is merely thatthe principle adopted in 1899 in the case of Scottish Private Billsshould apply to Ireland, and this has not met with much objection. Underit local inquiries, which are at present conducted at Westminster, wouldbe carried out in the localities affected, with much saving of expense;and it is only necessary to add that as long ago as 1881 a Bill wasintroduced to transfer from Westminster to Ireland the semi-judicial andsemi-legislative business entailed in the passage of Private Billsthrough Parliament. 

The statutory administrative council proposed by the Irish ReformAssociation was to consist of thirteen members, of whom six were to beelected by the County Councils, six were to be the nominees of theCrown, while the Lord Lieutenant, who was to preside as chairman, was tohave the right to exercise the privilege of a casting vote. From ademocratic point of view such a body would be an assembly _pour rire_, and would only serve to entrench the present bureaucracy more securelyby the semblance of representation which it would offer, while retainingthe power of the purse in the hands of a body carefully constituted insuch a way that the small minority who comprise the ascendancy factionin the country would be permanently maintained in a majority on thecouncil. A great deal more could be said in defence of another proposalwhich has been mooted--namely, that the principle of proportionalrepresentation should be adopted. In a country like Ireland, where thedividing line between the two great parties is unusually wide, with anordinary system of small constituencies, the men of intermediate viewslike those of Mr. Sloan or of the members of the Reform Associationwould, even though they existed in much larger numbers than is the case, not secure any great measure of representation, but in comparativelylarge constituencies this would not be so. 

The attitude of the Nationalists in anticipation of the Governmentproposal of last session was expressed by Mr. Redmond, speaking on St. Patrick's Day at Bradford:--

"If the scheme gave the Irish people genuine power and control overquestions of administration alone, if it left unimpaired the Nationalmovement and the National Party, and if it lightened the financialburden under which Ireland staggered, then very possibly Ireland mightseriously consider whether such a scheme ought not to be accepted forwhat it was worth. "

The Irish Council Bill, as all the world knows, proposed to set up inDublin an administrative Council, consisting of 82 elected, 24nominated, members, with the Under Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant asan _ex officio_ member. This body was to have control over eight of theforty-five departments which constitute "Dublin Castle"--namely, thoserelating to Local Government, Public Works, National Education, Intermediate Education, the Registrar-General's Office, Public Works, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, CongestedDistricts, and Reformatory Schools. The nature of the departmentsexcluded from its jurisdiction is of more consequence, including as theydo the Supreme Court of Judicature, the Royal Irish Constabulary, theDublin Metropolitan Police, the Land Commission, and the Prisons' Board. 

The Bill proposed that the Council should be elected triennially on thesame franchise as that on which local authorities are at presentelected, and its powers were to be exercised by four Committees--ofLocal Government, Finance, Education, and Public Works--the decisions ofwhich were to come up before the Council as a whole, for alteration orapproval. The Bill proposed to constitute an Irish Treasury with anIrish fund of £4, 000, 000, made up of the moneys at present voted to thedepartments concerned, together with an additional £650, 000. The sumspaid into this fund were to be fixed by the Imperial Parliament everyfive years. Finally, the resolutions of the Council, by Clause 3 of theBill, were subject to the confirmation of the Lord Lieutenant, who, bythe same clause, was to be empowered to reserve such resolutions for hisown consideration, to remit them for further consideration by theCouncil, or, lastly, "if in the opinion of the Lord Lieutenant immediateaction is necessary with respect to the matter to which the resolutionrelates, in order to preserve the efficiency of the service, or toprevent public or private injury, the Lord Lieutenant may make suchorder with respect to the matter as in his opinion the necessity of thecase requires, and any order so made shall have the same effect andoperate in the same manner as if it were the resolution of the IrishCouncil. "

These were the provisions of the measure which the Liberals introducedto the disappointment of their Unionist opponents, who had foretold thatit would be a Home Rule Bill under some form of alias, intended to dupethe predominant partner. It is to be noted that in 1885 Mr. Chamberlainmade a proposal which was on the same lines as this, but went further inone respect--that there was no nominated element on the Board which heproposed to create, and furthermore, the powers of the departments wouldunder it have been transferred to a single elective Board, whereas underthe Council Bill the departments were to be suffered to continue, albeitunder control. Lord Randolph Churchill was prepared at the time of Mr. Chamberlain's proposal to give even more than the latter wished toconcede, but both proposals were forgotten on the announcement by Mr. Gladstone of his intention to legislate on a comprehensive basis. 

The attitude of Mr. Redmond on the first reading of the Bill has been sogrossly misrepresented by the English Press, both Liberal andConservative, which published only carefully-prepared epitomes of hisspeech, that it is necessary that one should devote some attention towhat he actually said. After asserting that no one could expect him orhis colleagues--until they had the actual Bill in their hand and hadtime to consider every portion of the scheme, and to elicit Irish publicopinion with reference to it--to offer a deliberate or final judgment, Mr. Redmond went on to reaffirm what the Irish people have longconsidered the minimum demand which can satisfy their aspirations, anddeclared that since the measure was introduced as neither a substitutenor an alternative for Home Rule, he would proceed to consider itsterms. "Does the scheme, " the Irish leader went on to ask, "give agenuine and effective control to Irish public opinion over those mattersof administration referred to the Council? If not the scheme is worsethan useless. " After protesting strongly against the nominated elementin the Council as being undemocratic, Mr. Redmond went on to express hiswillingness "to accept it or any other safeguard that the wit of mancould devise, consistent with the ordinary principles of representativegovernment, which is necessary to show the minority in Ireland thattheir fears are groundless. " He then proceeded strongly to criticisethe power of the Lord Lieutenant under Clause 3--a power not confined toa mere exercise of veto such as is possessed by a colonial governor, butsomething much more than this--"a power on the part of the LordLieutenant to interfere with and thwart every single act, so that ahostile Lord Lieutenant might stop the whole machine. If that was theintention of the Government it destroyed the valuable and genuinecharacter of the power given to the Council. " Having protested againstthe proposal that the Chairmen of Committees were to be the nominees ofthe Lord Lieutenant, and, therefore, not necessarily in sympathy withthe majority of the Council, Mr. Redmond went on to say:--"The wholequestion hinges on whether the finance is adequate. The money grant isludicrously inadequate. I fear that the £650, 000 would be mortgaged fromthe day the measure passed, and that it would be impossible with such anamount to work the scheme. "

Mr. Redmond then concluded his speech with the paragraph to which mostprominence was given in the English Press, with a view to suggest thathe accepted, with only minor reservations, the proposals of theGovernment. I quote it _in extenso_ to show how slender is the groundfor this imputation:--

"I am most anxious to find, if I can, in this scheme an instrumentwhich, while admittedly it will not solve the Irish problem, will, atany rate, remove some of the most glaring and palpable causes which keepIreland poverty-stricken and Irishmen hopeless and disaffected. It is inthat spirit that my colleagues and I will address ourselves to the Bill. We shrink from the responsibility of rejecting anything which after thefull consideration which this Bill will secure, seems to our deliberatejudgment calculated to ease the suffering of Ireland, and hasten the dayof full convalescence. "[27]

No one can suggest, in view of these words, that Mr. Redmond committedhimself or his colleagues to anything further than to consider the Billin a critical but not a hostile spirit. As to the suggestion that a votefor the first reading and the printing of the Bill in any sense involvedthe party in even a modified acceptance of the measure, in doing so theIrish members were acting in fulfilment of a pledge given by Mr. Redmondsix months before, when, speaking on September 23rd, he said:--

"When the scheme is produced it will be anxiously and carefullyexamined. It will be submitted to the judgment of the Irish people, andno decision will be come to, whether by me or by the Irish Party, untilthe whole question has been submitted to a National Convention. When thehour of that Convention comes any influence which I possess with myfellow-countrymen will be used to induce them firmly to reject anyproposal, no matter how plausible, which, in my judgment, may becalculated to injure the prestige of the Irish Party and disrupt theNational movement, because my first and my greatest policy, whichovershadows everything else, is to preserve a united National Party inParliament, and a United powerful organisation in Ireland, until we haveachieved the full measure of National freedom to which we are entitled. "

If the Irish Party had not voted for the first reading we should havebeen told by their critics that their action was a despotic attempt tooverride and smother the freely-expressed opinions of the Irish people, but it must not be forgotten that it is due to Mr. Redmond's owninitiative that in the case of this Bill, as in the case of the LandBill of 1903, the final decision has rested, not, as in the case of theHome Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, with the members of the ParliamentaryParty, but, by a sort of referendum, with a National Conventioncontaining representative Irishmen elected for the purpose from everypart of the country in the most democratic manner. It is worthy ofattention that the very people who five years ago were declaring inGreat Britain that Home Rule was dead and damned were those who wereloudest during the general election in the attempt to raise latentprejudice on that score, and to bring it to pass that the condition ofthings existing twenty years ago was repeated when, as Lord Salisburydeclared in a speech to the National Conservative Club, "all thepolitics of the moment are summarised in the one word--Ireland. "

In spite of these facts, Mr. Balfour, speaking on the first reading ofthe Council Bill, was constrained to admit that it bore no resemblanceto any plan which the Irish people had ever advocated, and he went on todeclare his inability to see how by any process of development it wascapable of being turned into anything which the Nationalists evercontemplated. The unanimity with which the Bill was repudiated byNationalist public opinion in Ireland is to be seen from the fact thatnot a single voice was raised on its behalf at the National Convention, comprising 3, 000 delegates, which was the most representative meeting ofany kind which has ever been held in Ireland. The reasons for itsrejection are to be read in the light of the repeatedly expressedopinions of the more radical section of the Ministerial Party, to theeffect that a bolder and more comprehensive scheme might have been wellintroduced without any infringement of the election pledges of theGovernment. Under Clause 3 the Lord Lieutenant, an officer under the new_régime_, as now, of a British Ministry, would have been empowered toact in defiance of the opinion of the Council either by modifying theirresolutions as to Executive action or by overriding them by orders ofhis own, or rather of the Ministry of which he was a member. On pointssuch as this dealing with the constitution of the assembly, Mr. Redmondwas able to inform the Convention that no amendments would be acceptedby the Government, and experience has taught Irishmen that althoughthese powers might generally, under a Liberal Government, be exercisedin a legitimate manner, under a Unionist Lord Lieutenant they would beexercised in a despotic fashion, just as, in the words of the EstatesCommissioners themselves, the instructions issued by the Lord Lieutenantin February, 1905, were designed "seriously to impede the expeditiousworking of the Land Act of 1903. " Great objection was taken to the factthat the resources of the Council would be such as to effect littleadministrative improvement, since the departments under its control werethe very bodies which demanded increased expenditure, while it leftuntouched the Police, the Prisons' Board, and the Judiciary, thereckless extravagance of which afforded obvious sources from which, bymodification of their wasteful expense, one could make large economiesfor the benefit of those portions of the Irish service which at thepresent moment are starved. 

Though it may be said that the acceptance of the Bill without prejudicewould not have stultified the principles already vindicated in a longstruggle by the Irish people, the body as constituted, it was felt, would have served the purpose of the Unionist party by dividing withouta sufficient _quid pro quo_ the attention of the Irish people from theirdevotion to the cause for the broad principles of which they have beenstriving, and there was this further danger that a body so restricted inits scope and anti-democratic in its administration would have brokendown in action, and would have in this way provided Unionists with thevery strongest possible argument for opposition to a full autonomy. 

While a certain proportion of Liberals are prepared to admit that theBill made havoc of Liberal principles there is a Laodicean section whohave greatly blamed Irish Nationalists for having refused what wasoffered them, when having asked for bread they were given a stone. Tosuch people as I have in mind I should like to quote what Mr. Gladstonewrote to Lord Hartington on November 10th, 1885:--

"If that consummation--the concession to Ireland of full power to manageher own local affairs--is in any way to be contemplated, action at astroke will be more honourable, less unsafe, less uneasy than thejolting process of a series of partial measures. "[28]

The position of that section of Liberals is strange which is representedby the assertion that their party has already made enough sacrifices inregard to Irish affairs, and which is anxious to return to the _laissezfaire_ policy of their mid-Victorian predecessors. The point I submit isthis, either Liberals do or they do not believe in the principle ofself-government as applied to Ireland, and if they do adhere to it noeffort is too great, no difficulty too extreme, for them to face in theattempt to solve so serious a problem. Those who think that because in1886, and again in 1893, the Liberals, with Irish support, unsuccessfully attempted to solve the Irish question, they have therebycontracted out of their moral obligation, take a very curious view ofthe responsibilities of popular government; but it is not so strange asthe position of those who hold that because in 1907 the Irish peoplerefused a particular form of change in the methods of government forwhich they never asked, they have in consequence closed every avenue toconstitutional reform which can be opened for many years. 

In politics it is often the unexpected that happens, and he would be abold prophet who should declare it impossible that within a few yearsLiberals may not return _in toto_ to the advocacy of sound principles inregard to Ireland, the abandonment of which is to be traced to therecrudescence of Whiggism after Mr. Gladstone's death and the desire tofind some line of policy which might be pilloried as a scapegoat toaccount for the disgust of the country with a divided party in the yearsfollowing 1895. Liberalism, for its part, if it is to settle theproblem, must fully appreciate the fact that its proposals, if they areto succeed, must be accepted with the full concurrence of the Irishrepresentative majority, and on the part of Irishmen what is demanded isa recognition of the results of the dispensation which has placed thetwo islands side by side; by these means only can a practicable policybe ensured, but it must be remembered with regard to those in Irelandwho hold extreme views, that the continuance of the system of governmentwhich holds the field, and the financial burden at the expense ofIreland which it perpetuates, serve increasingly to obscure and at thesame time to counteract the advantages accruing from the connectionbetween the two countries, which one may hope would, in happiercircumstances, be obvious. 

The Irish people still appreciate the force of that maxim of EdmundBurke's, that the things which are not practicable are not desirable. While they claim that as of right they are entitled to demand aseparation of the bonds, to the forging of which they were notconsenting parties, as practical men they are prepared loyally to abideby a compromise which will maintain the union of the crowns whileseparating the Legislatures. An international contract leaving them anindependent Parliament with an Executive responsible to it, havingcontrol over domestic affairs, is their demand. Grattan's constitutioncomprised a sovereign Parliament with a non-Parliamentary Executive, inso far as the latter was appointed and dismissed by English Ministers. The constitution which is demanded to-day is the same as that enjoyed bysuch a colony as Victoria, with a non-sovereign Parliament, having, thatis, a definite limit to its legislative powers, such as those under theBill of 1886 referring to Church Establishment and Customs, but havingan Executive directly responsible to it. 

The case of the Irish people has never been put with more clearness andfrankness than it was by Mr. Redmond in the House of Commons two yearsago. Having been accused by Unionists of adopting a more extreme lineoutside Parliament than that which he followed at St. Stephen's, theIrish leader in reply, after declaring that separation from GreatBritain would be better than a continuance of the present method ofgovernment, and that he should feel bound to recommend armed revolt ifthere were any chance of its success, went on to say:--

"I am profoundly convinced that by constitutional means, and within theconstitution, it is possible to arrive at a compromise based upon theconcession of self-government--or, as Mr. Gladstone used to call it, autonomy--to Ireland, which would put an end to this ancientinternational quarrel upon terms satisfactory and honourable to bothnations. "

An Orangeman described the late Government as being engaged in theuseless task of trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated. The words of Mr. Redmond indicate the one way in which a _PacataHibernia_ can be secured within the Empire. It is a compromise, but ithas this one virtue which compromises rarely possess--that it willsatisfy the great mass of the Irish people, and it concedes, as we hold, no vital principle. 

CHAPTER X

CONCLUSION

 "Unsettled questions have no pity for the repose of nations. "

 --EDMUND BURKE. 

The position of the mass of the Irish people with regard to the presentform of government has nowhere been more cogently expressed than in thechapter on the Union in the "Cambridge Modern History, " the writer ofwhich describes it as a settlement by compulsion, not by consent; andthe penalty of such methods is, that the instrument possesses no moralvalidity for those who do not accept the grounds on which it wasadopted. If Englishmen get this firmly fixed in their minds they willunderstand that we regard all Unionist reforms, whether from Liberal orConservative Governments, as instalments of conscience money, in regardto which, granting our premises, it would be sheer affectation toexpress surprise or to feign disgust at the lack of effusive gratitudewith which we receive them. "Give us back our ancient liberties" hasbeen the cry of the Irish people ever since George III. Gave his assentto the Act of Union. The ties of sentiment which bind her colonies soclosely to Great Britain are conspicuous by their absence in the case ofIreland. The ties of common interest which are not less strong in thematter of her colonial possessions are, albeit in existence as far asGreat Britain and Ireland are concerned, obscured and vitiated by thesystem of taxation which makes the poorer country contribute to thejoint expenses at a rate altogether disproportionate to her means, andwhich, while making her in this wise pay the piper, in no sense allowsher to call the tune. 

Never has there been applied in Ireland that doctrine which the _Times_enunciated so sententiously half a century ago in speaking of the PapalStates--"The destiny of a nation ought to be determined not by theopinions of other nations but by the opinion of the nation itself. Todecide whether they are well governed or not is for those who live underthat government. " If the _Times_ were to apply the wisdom of these wordsto the situation in Ireland instead of screaming "Separatism" at everybreath of a suggestion of the extension of democratic principles inIreland, it would take steps to secure a condition of things under whichthe people would not be alienated and would be a source of strength andnot of weakness. 

Writing in that paper in 1880, at a time when Ireland was seething withlawlessness, Charles Gordon declared--"I must say that the state of ourcountrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people inthe world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as weare, that they are patient beyond belief, loyal but broken-spirited anddesperate; lying on the verge of starvation where we would not keepcattle. "

On the day after the murder of Mr. Burke in the Phoenix Park a permanentCivil Servant was sent straight from the admiralty to take his place asUnder Secretary. Sir Robert Hamilton who served in Dublin in thosetrying conditions became a convinced Home Ruler, as did his chief, LordSpencer; and it is generally said to have been Sir Robert who convertedMr. Gladstone to Home Rule. On the return to power of the Conservatives, after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, Sir Robert Hamilton wasretired, and in his stead Sir Redvers Buller was sent to rule Ireland_manu militari_. This officer, on being examined by Lord Cowper'sCommission, expressed his opinion that the National League had been thetenants' best, if not their only, friend. "You have got, " he said, "avery ignorant, poor people, and the law should look after them, insteadof which it has only looked after the rich. " To hold opinions sounconventional in the service of a Unionist Viceroy was impossible, andin a year other fields for Sir Redvers' activities were found. Sir WestRidgeway, who succeeded him, served as Mr. Balfour's lieutenant duringthe latter's efforts to "kill Home Rule with kindness, " and it issignificant to find him at this day writing articles in the reviews onthe disappearance of Unionism, and pinning his faith to Dunravenism asthe next move. 

It is assuredly a remarkable fact that the shrewdest of Englishstatesmen have not been able to see the complication with which theIrish problem is entangled. Macaulay imagined that the religiousdifficulty was the crux of the Irish question, but Emancipation did notbring the expected peace and contentment in its train. John Brightimagined that the agrarian question was the only obstacle toreconciliation, but a recognition three-quarters of a century after theUnion that the laws of tenure are made for man and not man for the lawsof tenure, failed to put an end to Irish disaffection. Mr. Gladstonethought in 1870 that the Irish problem was solved. Complicated as thequestion has been in its various aspects--religious, racial, economic, and agrarian--our demands have too often and too long been met in thespirit of the Levite who passed by on the other side, until violence hasforced tardy redress, acquiesced in with reluctance. If the action ofWellington and Peel was pusillanimous in granting Emancipation, for theexpress purpose of resisting which they were placed in power, backed asthey were in their refusal by their allies in Ireland, the next greatmeasures of reform forty years later were admitted by Mr. Gladstonehimself to be equally the result of violence and breaches of the law. The Queen's Speech of 1880 contained but a passing reference to Irelandand of the intention of the Government to rule without exceptionallegislation; the Queen's Speech of 1881 contained reference to littlebut Ireland and of the intention of the Government to introduce aCoercion Bill. 

In July, 1885, Lord Salisbury's Viceroy, on taking office, deprecatedthe use of Coercion, but in January, 1886, the same Governmentintroduced a Coercion Bill, though less than six months before they hadrepudiated it, and had beaten the Liberal Government on this very issuewith the aid of the Irish vote. The manner in which both English partieshave eaten their words is warranted to inculcate political cynicism. Ifin 1881 the Liberals are declared to have jettisoned their principlesand to have perpetrated that which a few months before they declaredwould stultify their whole policy, the same damaging admission must bemade by the Tories as to their acquiescence in the Franchise Bill of1884 and their conduct of the Land Bill of 1887. 

"Anyone, " said Cavour, "can govern in a state of siege, " but I do notthink Englishmen realise the extent to which the ruling policy has beento accentuate the repressive to the exclusion of the beneficent side ofgovernment, and how ready they have been to make the government not oneof opinion, as in their own country, but one of force. When Mr. Balfourintroduced his perpetual Coercion Bill of 1887 it was estimated thatthere had been one such measure for every year of the century that waspassing. 

In the first instance, the institutions of Ireland, being imposed by aconquering country, never earned that measure of respect bred partly ofpride which attaches itself to the self-sown customs and processes ofnations; but, having introduced her legal system, England superseded itand took steps to rule by a code outside the Common Law, so that respectwas, therefore, asked for legal institutions which, on her own showing, and by her own admissions, had proved inadequate. In Ireland Governmentdid not "meet the headlong violence of angry power by covering theaccused all over with the armour of the law, " as in Erskine's famousphrase it did in England with regard to those imbued with revolutionaryprinciples. 

A rusty statute of Edward III. , which was devised for the suppression ofbrigandage, was used to condemn the leaders of the Irish people, unheard, in a court of law. Trial by jury was suspended and the commonright of freedom of speech was infringed. In 1901 no less than tenMembers of Parliament were imprisoned under the Crimes Act, and it wasnot until the appointment of Sir Antony MacDonnell to the UnderSecretaryship that the proclamation of the Coercion Act was withdrawn. 

It is no small matter that Mr. Bryce, when reviewing his period ofoffice, mentioned among the details of his policy that he had set hisface against jury-packing, and had allowed juries to be chosen perfectlyfreely. The suspension of the most cherished Common Law rights of thesubject from Habeas Corpus downwards has been the inevitable result of afailure to apply democratic principles of government. Jury-packing, forbidden meetings, summary arrests and prosecutions, and policereporters form a discreditable paraphernalia by which to maintain theconduct of government. 

As examples of the differential treatment meted out to Ireland which isnot of a nature to impress her with confidence in English methods may bementioned the fact that the Irish militia are drafted out of the countryfor their training, that no citizen army of volunteers is permitted, andthe desire of one faction to preserve these discriminations is to beseen in the anger with which was greeted the omission the other day ofthe Irish Arms Act from the Expiring Laws Continuation Bill. 

Under every bad government there arise popular organisations bred of thewildness of despair which enjoy the moral sanction which the law hasfailed to secure "When citizens, " said Filangieri long ago, "see theSword of Justice idle they snatch a dagger. " So long as the Governmentsate on the safety valve, so long did periodic explosions ofrevolutionary resentment arise, and one must appreciate the fact that ina country so devoutly Catholic as is Ireland the natural conservatismwhich attachment to an historic Church inculcates, and the direction onits part of anathemas at secret societies and at violence, served tomake it more difficult by far to arouse revolutionary reprisals than itwould be in similar circumstances in England. 

"When bad men combine, " wrote Edmund Burke, "the good must associate, else they will fall one by one an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptiblestruggle. " No one can accuse Burke--the apostle of constitutionalism, the arch-enemy of the French revolution--of condoning violence, but evenhe admitted that there is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be avirtue. 

England must blame herself for the war of classes with which theNational struggle has been complicated. It was the Act of Union whichmade the landlord class look to England, and established it in theanomalous position of a body drawing its income from one country and itssupport from another; by this means it made them a veritable Englishgarrison appealing to England as being the only loyal people. Let ushope it is not true to say at this date that like the Bourbons they havelearnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The rich, the proud, and thepowerful have had their day, and can one deny that the attempt to governIreland in the sole interests of a minority has made Ireland what it is. An unbiased French observer three-quarters of a century ago declaredthat the cause of Irish distress was its _mauvaise aristocratic_. It wasthe interest of this class, as they themselves admit, which was allowedto dominate the policy of the Unionist Party, and to effect this, forcewas the only available instrument. With the recognition of the fact thatthe possession of property is no guarantee of intelligence has come thecrippling of the policy of _laissez faire_, supported though it was bythe brewers of Dublin and the shipbuilders of Belfast, for thisreason--that rich men tend always to rally to the defence of property. The exercise of the duties which property imposes and the responsibilitywhich it entails being the chief advantages of a landed gentry, andtheir main _raison d'être_ as a ruling caste having been conspicuous byits absence, with few exceptions, in Ireland, the passing of thelandowner as a social factor is looked upon with complacency. 

English statesmen seem to have applied that maxim of Machiavelli--thatbenefits should be conferred little by little so as to be more fullyappreciated. It is hard to realise that little more than thirty yearshave elapsed since the time when the landed interest was supreme inthese islands. Their power was first assailed by the Ballot Act of 1873, and the Corrupt Practices Act of 1884 did much to put a term to a formof intimidation at which Tories did not hold up their hands in horror, while the Franchise Act of 1883 destroyed their power, so that in thoseyears passed away for ever the time when, as Archbishop Croke put it, anIrish borough would elect Barabbas for thirty pieces of silver. 

Of one thing, indeed, we may be certain, and that is that we havetouched bottom in the matter of Unionist concessions. The manner inwhich the programme mapped out between Mr. Wyndham and Sir AntonyMacDonnell was rendered nugatory is evidence of that. The administrationof the Land Act, under the secret instructions issued by Dublin Castle, was such as to cripple the Estates Commissioners in their application ofits provisions. The proposals as to the settlement of the Universityquestion were nipped in the bud after advances had been made to theCatholic bishops to discover what was the minimum which they wouldaccept, and this was done although Mr. Balfour had declared atManchester in 1899--"Unless the University question can be settledUnionism is a failure. "

Mr. F. H. Dale, an English Inspector of Schools, who, in the last coupleof years, has produced two comprehensive blue books on the state ofprimary and secondary education in Ireland, declared that he found thedesire for higher education in Ireland greater than in England; but inspite of this, so far, neither British party has advanced one step inthe direction of a permanent solution, pleading as excuse that the fearof strengthening the hands of the priests blocks the way, albeit auniversity under predominatingly lay control is all that even thehierarchy in Ireland demand; while to add to the groundlessness on whichintolerance is based the only institution of a satisfactory kind whichis endowed by the State is a Jesuit College supported by what one canonly call circuitous means. 

Mr. Balfour himself has admitted that no Protestant parent couldconscientiously send his son to a college which was as Catholic asTrinity is Protestant. If Oxford and Cambridge had been founded byforeign Catholics for the express purpose of destroying the Protestantreligion in England, a thirty years' abolition of tests, which in nosense affected their "atmosphere, " would not have overcome the prejudiceand scruples persisting against them. 

The vicious circles round which Irish questions rotate is nowhere seenmore clearly than in this connection. When complaint is made that adisproportionately small number of Catholics hold high appointments inthe public offices in Ireland, the reply is made that the number ofmembers of that Church with high educational qualifications is small;when demands are made for facilities for higher education, thereluctance of English people to publicly endow sectarian education isurged as an excuse, although Irishmen have not, since Trinity abolishedtests, made any demands for a purely sectarian University or College. 

I have shown how, as a result of our aloofness from both Englishparties, we find ourselves between the upper and the nether millstones, and in what way in regard to the University question the old error whichfor so long obstructed the land question is at work--mean the error ofdenying reform for English reasons and endeavouring to force Englishdoctrines into the law and government of Ireland and of suppressingIrish customs and Irish ideas. 

On the advent to power of the present Government the heads of the greatdepartments in Whitehall excused their apparent dilatoriness ineffecting those administrative changes which the country expected from aLiberal Government, by the fact that after twenty years of Conservativerule the permanent officials were so steeped in the methods of Toryismtheir habits were to such a degree tinged and coloured by its policy, that there was the greatest possible difficulty in making the necessaryalterations. In the case of Ireland this is so to a much greater extent, and one must recognise the truth of that saying of some Irish member tothe effect that a new Chief Secretary was like the change of the dial ona clock--the difference was not great, for the works remain the same. 

The main arguments against reform are founded on prophetic fears, and ifone is impressed by the threats of a _jacquerie_ on the part of theOrangemen, led though they may be again, as they were twenty years ago, by a Minister of Cabinet rank, Nationalists, on the other hand, mayremind Englishmen that the Irish volcanoes are not yet extinct, and thatthe history of reform is such as to show the value of violence on thefailure of peaceful persuasion--a feature the most lamentable in Irishpolitics; and in this connection let it never be forgotten that "thewarnings of Irish members, " as Mr. Morley wrote in the _Pall MallGazette_ on the introduction of the Coercion Bill which followed thePhoenix Park murders, "have a most unpleasant knack of coming true. "When the counsels of prudence coincide with the claims of justice, surely the last word had been said to disarm opposition. 

"Old Buckshot, " said Parnell grimly enough in 1881, "thinks that bymaking Ireland a gaol he will settle the Irish question. " Throwingover that theory Great Britain decided in 1884--in the phrase thencurrent--that to count heads was better than to break them, but havingcounted them she ignored their verdict, and has continued so to do formore than twenty years. One would have thought that she would haveapplied the rigour of her theories and put an end to this travesty bywhich she has conceded the letter of democracy--a phantom privilegewhich she has rendered nugatory. It was the impossibility of ignoringthe constitutionally-expressed wishes of the Irish people after he hadextended the suffrage, which made Mr. Gladstone a Home Ruler, andEnglishmen have to remember that this, the only remedy in the whole oftheir political materia medica which they have not tried, is the onewhich has effected a cure wherever else it has been applied. 

I ask, to what does England look forward in a prolongation of thepresent conditions? There is no finality in the politics of Ireland anymore than in those of other countries. She cannot say to Ireland--"Thusfar shalt thou go, and no further. " As one burning question is solvedanother arises to take its place and to demand redress. The battle forthe moment may seem to be to the strong, but in the long run might isunable to resist the advances of right. Time, we may well declare, is onour side; but one has to count the cost in the material damage to us, and in the moral damage to Great Britain, in the ultimate concession, perhaps under duress, of so much which has repeatedly been refused. Ever since, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone "banished to Saturn the laws ofpolitical economy, " strong measures of State socialism have been enactedby both parties. It is not for nothing that the tenants in the West findthemselves to-day paying less than half for their holdings of what theypaid twenty years ago, and paying it, moreover, not by way of rent butas a terminable annuity. If there is one point which the events of thelast generation have established in their eyes it is this--that Parnellwas justified in telling them to keep a firm grip of their holdings, andthat Great Britain has admitted the justice of the grounds on whichtheir agitation was based, by the revolution in the social fabric whichshe has set in train by the Land Purchase Acts. 

Who was the witty Frenchman who declared that England was an island andthat every Englishman was an island? It is not only because of thispreoccupation with their own affairs that their _amour propre_ has beeninjured by their failure in Ireland. One cannot expect to gather figsfrom thistles or grapes from thorns, and when Englishmen appreciate tohow small an extent the Union has enured to the advantage of Ireland, they will understand the feelings which actuate the desire forself-government. Is there anything which makes Englishmen believe thatthe extension of Land Purchase or the foundation of a university willmake for a permanent settlement? The history of the last half centurycan scarcely make them sanguine that when the burning questions ofto-day have been disposed of they will find in the Imperial Parliamentthe knowledge, the interest, or the time necessary for dealing with newquestions as they arise--for arise they assuredly will. 

Great Britain may legislate with lazy, ill-informed, good intentions, asMr. Gladstone admitted was done in the case of the Encumbered EstatesAct, or she may grant concessions piecemeal, and the minority whichthereby she maintains will denounce every reform as mere _panem etcircenses_ by which she hopes to keep the majority subdued. 

The "loyal minority" have cried "wolf" too often. Nearly forty yearsago, when Disestablishment was threatened, the Protestant Archbishop ofDublin said--"You will put to Irish Protestants the choice betweenapostacy and expatriation, and every man among them who has money orposition, when he sees his Church go, will leave the country. If you dothat, you will find Ireland so difficult to manage that you will have todepend on the gibbet and the sword. "

The twenty-five attempts to settle by legislation the land question werein nearly every instance denounced as spoliation by the House of Lords, which was constrained to let them pass into law. The pages of Hansardare grey with unfulfilled forebodings as to what would be the effect ofthe extension of the Franchise and of the grant of popular LocalGovernment. The results of the former took the wind out of the sails ofthose who declared that popular wishes in Ireland were overridden by apolitical caucus, the success of local government has given Orangemenoccasion to blaspheme. 

The history of Irish legislation on all these points has been one ofbelated concession to demands repeatedly made, at first scouted andfinally surrendered. And withal, English statesmen have not killed HomeRule with kindness. "Twenty years of resolute government" wereconfidently expected to give Irish Nationalism its _quietus. E pur simuove. _

NOTES

[1] L. Paul-Dubois. _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, p. 174. 

[2] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, " Vol. II. , p. 455. 

[3] _L'Irlande Contemporaine_, p. 232. 

[4] Hansard, August 1, 1881. 

[5] _Ibid. _, September 3, 1886. 

[6] _Ibid. _, August 19, 1886. 

[7] _Ibid. _, March 22, 1887. 

[8] _Ibid. _, April 22, 1887. 

[9] _Ibid. _, February 14, 1907. 

[10] The statement in the text, written shortly after theprorogation of Parliament, unexpectedly demands modification. Almost allthe planters on the Clanricarde estate have expressed their readiness toclear out of the evicted lands and to accept re-settlement elsewhere. The Lords' amendments will in consequence not prove the obstacle whichit was feared they would to the exercise of powers of compulsion by theEstates Commissioners against the owner. 

[11] "Greville Memoirs, " Series I. , Vol. III. , p. 269. 

[12] _Ibid. _, Series II. , p. 217, December, 1843. 

[13] _Ibid. _, Series II. , Vol. II. , March, 1846. 

[14] Hansard, February, 1848. 

[15] _United Irishman_, May 14, 1904. 

[16] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, " Vol. II. , p. 4, October14, 1885. 

[17] Hansard, May 20, 1884. 

[18] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, " Vol. II. , p. 456, 1892. 

[19] "Greville, " Series I. , Vol. II. , p. 76, November, 1830. 

[20] "Life of Whately, " Vol. II. , p. 246, 1852. 

[21] "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill, " Vol. II. , p. 28, December, 1885. 

[22] Morley's "Life of Gladstone, " Vol. II. , Bk. IX. , Cap. 4, p. 524. 

[23] Hansard, March 6, 1905. 

[24] _Times_, January 10, 1906. 

[25] Mrs. John Richard Green, _Independent Review_, June, 1905. 

[26] "Ireland and the Empire, " p. 275. 

[27] Hansard, May 7, 1907. 

[28] Morley's "Life of Gladstone, " Vol. II. , Bk. IX. , Cap. 1, p. 481. 

ADDENDUM

PAGE 51. --A Bill introduced last session by Mr. William Redmond whichpassed through both Houses of Parliament without opposition or debate, will, when at an early date it comes into force, repeal the TobaccoCultivation Act, 1831, which forbade the growth of tobacco in Ireland. Under the new Act there will be no obstacle in the way of itscultivation, provided the excise conditions which will be imposed arecomplied with. 

Among the places in which experiments in tobacco growing have been madein the last few years are Randalstown in Meath, Tagoat in Wexford, andTullamore in King's County, and in addition Lord Dunraven and Col. Hon. Otway Cuffe have shown the success with which this crop may becultivated in other parts of Ireland. 

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