The Framework of Home Rule Part 7
In sober, weighty, tactful phrases, carefully chosen to avoid giving needless offence to the Dutch, the despatch laboriously overthrows the Liberal theory of government, and works out the negation of all Imperial experience. It deplores the "bitter memories" of war, which free inst.i.tutions, by tending to "emphasize and stereotype the racial line,"
will make more, not less bitter, and which can be effaced only by the "healing effect of time." We think of the Durham Report, of Ireland, and marvel. We recollect the bulky Blue-Book at Mr. Lyttelton's elbow as he wrote, full of speeches and articles by Englishmen, showing quite correctly, as has since been proved, that the "racial line" in Johannesburg was growing fainter daily with the mere prospect of responsible government. These men were not afraid of the Dutch, and said so. The answer was that they ought to be, or, in the persuasive language of diplomacy, as follows:
"His Majesty's Government trust that those of British origin in the Transvaal who, with honest conviction, have advocated the immediate concession of full responsible government, will recognize the soundness and cogency of the reasons, both in their own interests and in those of the Empire, for proceeding more cautiously and slowly, and that under a political system which admittedly has its difficulties they will, notwithstanding a temporary disappointment, do their best to promote the welfare of the country and the smooth working of its inst.i.tutions."
Then came a chivalrous compliment to the Dutch for their "gallant struggle" in the war, coupled with a reminder that they are not to be trusted with political power, a reminder so courteously worded that it, too, becomes a compliment:
"The inhabitants of Dutch origin have recently witnessed, after their gallant struggle against superior power, the fall of the Republic founded by the valour and sufferings of their ancestors, and cannot be expected, until time has done more to heal the wound, to entertain the most cordial feelings towards the Government of the Transvaal. But from them also, as from a people of practical genius, who have learned by long experience to make the best of circ.u.mstances, His Majesty's Government expect co-operation in the task of making their race, no longer in isolated independence, a strong pillar in the fabric of a world-wide Empire. That this should be the result, and that a complete reconciliation between men of two great and kindred races should, under the leading of Divine Providence, speedily come to pa.s.s, is the ardent desire of His Majesty the King and of His Majesty's Government."
The tone recalls the tone of Pitt and Castlereagh in proposing the Union. But Fitzgibbon went more directly to the point in saying outright that, Ireland having been conquered and confiscated, the colonists "were at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the island," and that laws must be framed by an external power to "meet the vicious propensities of human nature." Let us recognize unreservedly that the words of the Transvaal despatch were the outcome of deep and sincere conviction. That is the worst of it. From age to age Ireland has to suffer for the depth and sincerity of these convictions. There, too, the cleavage of race and religion, never complete, always defying the official efforts to "stereotype and emphasize it," to quote the despatch of 1905, grows fainter with time, and will grow fainter as long as the national movement lives to draw men together in the common interest of Ireland.
The Volunteers, Wolfe Tone, Emmet, many of the Young Irelanders, Isaac b.u.t.t, Parnell, were Protestants. And there is a strong band of Protestant Home Rulers to-day in Ulster and out of it, landlords, tenants, capitalists, labourers, Members of Parliament, and clergymen, who declare that they are not afraid of Catholic oppression, and who are told by Unionists that they ought to be. And in Ireland, too, the Roman Catholic majority are told, rarely, it is true, in the courteous phrases of Mr. Lyttelton's despatch, that they "cannot be expected to entertain the most cordial feelings towards the Government." In Ireland, also, is a "political system which admittedly has its difficulties," ironical euphemism for a system whose a.n.a.logue in the Transvaal could have been used by the subject race, had they so willed, to bring civil government to a standstill, without the means of furnishing anything better, and which under the Act of Union can be, and has been, used to dislocate the Parliamentary life of the United Kingdom. The Boers were asked "as a people of practical genius" to a.s.sist the "smooth working" of an unworkable Const.i.tution, so as to promote the "reconciliation of two great and kindred races." The Irish are pursued with invective for legitimately using the const.i.tutional power given them in order, while freeing Parliament from an intolerable incubus, to gain the right to elicit character and responsibility in themselves by shouldering their own burdens and saving their own souls.
If the official view of the Transvaal was mistaken, the summit of error was reached in the view taken of the Orange River Colony. In that Colony, which was almost wholly pastoral and Dutch, and which until the war had enjoyed free inst.i.tutions uninterruptedly for half a century, and had made remarkably good vise of them, representative government, even of the illusory kind designed for the Transvaal, was to be indefinitely postponed, postponed at any rate until the results of the "experiment" in the Transvaal had been observed.
The Government "recognize that there are industrial and economic conditions peculiar to the Transvaal, which make it very desirable in that Colony to have at the earliest possible date some better means of ascertaining the views of the different sections of the population than the present system affords. The question as regards the Orange River Colony being a less urgent one, it appears to them that there will be advantage in allowing a short period to intervene before elective representative inst.i.tutions are granted to the last-named Colony, because this will permit His Majesty's Government to observe the experiment, and, if need be, to profit by the experience so gained."
What is the train of reasoning in this strange specimen of political argument? It was important to "ascertain the views" of the bi-racial Transvaal, but needless to ascertain the views of the practically h.o.m.ogeneous Orange River Colony. The "question" there is a "less urgent one." What question? Why less urgent? Is it that the British minority, being so very small, is more liable to oppression by the Dutch? That is a tenable point, though by parity of reasoning it would seem to make the question more, not less, urgent, and the importance of "ascertaining the views" of the different sections of the population, greater, not less.
Or is it the diametrically opposite train of thought, namely, that an a.s.sumed improbability of disorder owing to the h.o.m.ogeneity of the population is a reason, not for giving Home Rule, but for withholding it? These contradictions and confusions are painfully familiar in anti-Home Rule dialectics all over the world. A quiet Ireland does not want Home Rule; a turbulent Ireland is not fit for it. If the Unionist element in Ireland is strong, that is clearly an argument for withholding Home Rule in deference to the wishes of a strong minority.
If the minority, on the other hand, is proved to be small, all the greater reason for withholding it, because oppression by the majority will be easier. So the sterile argument swings back and forth, and men still talk of "experiments" and "profiting by experience," while the demonstration of their errors is written in the blood and tears of centuries, and while ma.s.ses of facts acc.u.mulate, demonstrating the great truth that free democratic government, whatever its disadvantages and dangers--and it has both--is the best resource for uniting, strengthening, and enriching a community of white men.
The Transvaal Const.i.tution of 1905 was cancelled on the incoming of the Liberal Ministry at the end of that year, and in the following year full responsible government was granted both to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, with the results that we know. Instantaneously there permeated the bi-racial urban society in the Transvaal a new sense of brotherhood. Men of different race, as far apart in spirit as the members of the Kildare Street Club, the Orange Societies, and the Ancient Order of Hibernians, met and made friends because it was not only natural but necessary to make friends, since on all alike lay the burden of doing their best for their country on a basis of equal citizenship. n.o.body out there called the new system an "experiment." The wrench once over, the thing once done, there was general unanimity that whatever the difficulties--and there were great difficulties--it was the right thing to be done under the circ.u.mstances, and if this unanimity was combined, rightly or wrongly, with a good deal of resentment against the Liberal att.i.tude at home towards Chinese labour, n.o.body is any the worse for that. The day will come when even that burning question will be seen in its true perspective as an infinitesimally small point beside the great principle of responsible government, which includes the decision of labour questions, together with all other branches of domestic policy.
Conservative opinion at home has been slower to change than British opinion in the Transvaal. But, again, this was natural. Parties had long been divided on the South African question. The abrupt reversal of policy was felt as a humiliation, and the ingrained mental habits engendered by the traditional policy towards Ireland yielded slowly, grudgingly, and fearfully to the proof of error in South Africa. It is not for the sake of opening an old wound, but solely because it is absolutely necessary for the completion of my argument, that I have to recall the angry and violent speeches which followed the announcement of the new policy; the dogmatic prognostications of Imperial disruption, of financial collapse, and of a cruel Boer tyranny in the emanc.i.p.ated Colonies; the charges of wanton betrayal of loyalists, of disgraceful surrender to "the enemy." Some of the leading actors in these scenes, notably Mr. Balfour and Mr. Lyttelton, have since acknowledged that they were wrong, while apparently feeling it their duty as honourable and loyal men to give a somewhat misleading turn to an old controversy in their praise of Lord Milner's services to South Africa. That Lord Milner, in his administration during and after the war, did, indeed, do a vast amount of sound and lasting work for South Africa is perfectly true, and he deserves all honour for it. Probably no public servant of the Empire ever laboured in its service with more unstinted devotion and a higher sense of duty. But good administration is not an adequate subst.i.tute for knowledge of men, and that knowledge Lord Milner lacked.
He did no service to the British colonists of South Africa in telling them that they had been shamefully betrayed by the Home Government in 1906. It would have been wiser to advise them to rely on themselves and on the justice and wisdom of their Dutch fellow-citizens. His violent speeches in 1906-1908 about the calamitous results of permitting Dutch influences free play in South Africa--speeches breathing the essential spirit of Fitzgibbonism--would have wrought incalculable mischief had they coincided with effective British policy; while his view, as expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory regime of benevolent despotism, showing "the obvious solicitude of the Government for the welfare of the people," and taking shape "in a hundred and one works of material advancement," would "win us friends and diminish our enemies," evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish experience before us. "Twenty years of resolute government," said Lord Salisbury. "Home Rule will be killed by kindness," said many of his successors. In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland. If even at this late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire.
As practical men, let us remember that the Const.i.tutions of 1906 would not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent, they had had to pa.s.s through Parliament in the form of a Bill. The whole Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the Letters Patent. Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of Commons will not forget the scene. I recall this fact without any desire to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong. Nor does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is confirmed by a General Election. Home Rule for Canada never had to pa.s.s, and would not have pa.s.sed even the Parliamentary test. Skilful and determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian Const.i.tutions. No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and Orange River Const.i.tutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of the great parties thrown into the scale against them. We know the case made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force.
If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886 and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06. With the alteration of a name or two, with the subst.i.tution, for example, of Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish Home Rule might be almost interchangeable. For electioneering purposes, evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem d.a.m.ning and unanswerable. All the arts for inflaming popular pa.s.sion under the pretext of "patriotism" would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes a.s.sumes strange disguises. The material would have been rich and easily accessible. Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, would have been ready for the h.o.a.rdings and the fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect.
Am I weakening the case for democracy itself in pressing this view?
Surely not. One democracy is incapable of understanding the domestic needs and problems of another. Whenever, therefore, a democracy finds itself responsible for the adjudication of a claim for Home Rule from white men, it should limit itself to ascertaining whether the claim is genuine and sincere. If it is, the claim should be granted, and a Const.i.tution constructed in friendly concert with the men who are to live under it. That way lies safety and honour, and, happily, the democracy is being educated to that truth. If this be a counsel of perfection; if the difficult and delicate task of settling the details of Irish Home Rule is to be hampered and complicated by the resuscitation of those time-honoured discussions over abstract principles which ought long ago to have been buried and forgotten, let every patriotic and enlightened man at any rate do his best to sweeten and mollify the controversy, to extirpate its grosser manifestations, and to subst.i.tute reason for pa.s.sion.
The grant of responsible government to the Transvaal and Orange River Colony reacted with amazing rapidity on South African politics as a whole. It took the Canadian Provinces twenty-seven years (if we reckon from 1840), and the Australian States forty-five years (if we reckon from 1855), to reach a Federal Union. Hardly a minute was wasted in South Africa. Under very able guidance, the scheme was canva.s.sed almost from the first, and in two years trusted leaders of both races, representing Natal, Cape Colony, and two newly emanc.i.p.ated Colonies--men, some of whom had been shooting at one another only five years before--were sitting at a table together hammering out the details of a South African Union. Here, indeed, was shown the "practical genius"
which the Government of 1905 had piously invoked for their abortive Const.i.tution. In the spirit of forbearance, of sympathy, of wise compromise, which governed the proceedings of this famous Conference, was to be found the measure of the longing of all parties to extinguish racialism and make South Africa truly a nation. The Imperial Act legalizing the arrangements ultimately arrived at by the agreement of the colonists was pa.s.sed in 1909. The political system constructed cannot be called Federal. The framers rejected the Australian model, and went much beyond the Canadian model in centralizing authority and diminishing local autonomy; nor can there be any doubt that the strongest motive behind that policy was that of securing the harmony of the two white races.
All this was the result of trusting the Dutch in 1906. "We cannot expect you to trust us, and we shall not trust you," said the despatch of 1905.
We know what the consequences of that policy would have been. It is not a question of imagination or hypothesis. It is a question of the operation of certain unchanging laws in the conduct of all white men.
Good or bad, our government would have been detested. We should have manufactured sedition, lawlessness, and discord. Then the tendency would have been strong to follow the old Irish precedent, and make the evil symptoms we had ourselves educed the pretext for tightening the screw of anti-popular government. It would have been said that we must sustain our prestige to the end and at all costs, a phrase which often cloaks the obstinacy of moral cowardice. Or, too late to escape the contempt of the Boers, we might have abruptly surrendered to clamour. It would have taken a long time to reach union then. Contempt is a bad foundation.
It brings one near despair to see the Union of South Africa used by men who should know better as an argument against Irish Home Rule. The chain of causation is so clear, one would think, as to be incapable of misconstruction. But there seems to be no limit in certain minds to the prejudice against the principle of Home Rule. If it is seen to work well, the phenomenon is hurriedly swept into oblivion, and its results attributed with feverish ingenuity to any cause but the true one. The very speed with which the antidote pervades the body politic and expels the old poison helps these untiring propagators of error to suppress the history of recuperation, and to ascribe the cure of the patient to a treatment which, if applied long enough, would have killed him. The Conservative party appear to have now reached this amazing conclusion: that they and Lord Milner were the authors of the South African Union, and that that Union is a weapon sent them by Providence for combating the Irish claims. This is what Ireland has to pay for being the sport of British parties. Individual statesmen may point at past mistakes; but a party, as a party, can never admit error: it is against the rules. To make things easier, there is that question-begging phrase, the "Union."
If South Africa, like Australia, had been federalized, this windfall would have been lost, because the word "Federal" might have suggested some form of Federal Home Rule for Ireland. Labels mean an enormous amount in politics.
There is not the slightest doubt that Mr. Walter Long, and even Lord Selborne, who, as High Commissioner, actually witnessed the whole evolution from responsible government in the two conquered States to the Union of South Africa, are perfectly sincere in their opposition to Irish Home Rule. But, I would respectfully suggest, it is their duty to use their knowledge and convictions in the right and fair way. Let them say, if they will, ignoring the intermediate and indispensable phase of Home Rule in South Africa: "Here are two Unions; never mind how they arose. Both are good: all Unions are good. The modern tendency to unify is sound; do not let us react to devolution." Let them, in other words, confine their argument to the domain of political science. What, I submit, they should refrain from, is the imputation of sordid motives to Nationalist leaders, the prognostications of religious and racial tyranny in Ireland, and all those inflammatory arguments against the principle of Home Rule which have been used all the world over, from time immemorial, for the maintenance of Unions based on legal, not on moral, ties, which were used against responsible government for the Transvaal, and which, I venture to affirm, degrade our public life.
I am a.s.suming for the moment that most Conservatives will elect to use the South African parallel in the way that Mr. Long and Lord Selborne have used it, that is, while tacitly approving in retrospect of the Home Rule of 1906, to argue from Union to Union. But it is of no use to blink the fact that there are pessimists who will put forward an ant.i.thetical case, boldly declaring that we were wrong ever to trust the Boers, that racialism is as bad as ever, that General Botha's loyalty is cant, the Cullinan diamond an insult, and that South Africa will go from bad to worse under a Dutch tyranny. Party propaganda is quite elastic enough to permit the two opposite views to be used to convince the same electorate at the same election. Pessimists are always active in these affairs, and they can always produce something in the nature of a plausible case, because it stands to reason that the evils of generations cannot be swept away in a moment, either in South Africa or Ireland. Miracles do not happen, and the pessimists, who are the curse of Ireland to-day, will be able to demonstrate with ease that the free Ireland of to-morrow will not enter instantaneously upon a millennium. It is useless to attempt to convert these extremists. For a century back, Hansard and the columns of daily papers have been full of their unfulfilled jeremiads about Canada, about Australia, and about the very smallest and most tardy attempts to give a little responsibility to the majority of citizens in Ireland. The vocabulary of impending ruin has been exhausted long ago; there is nothing new to be said. But those who care to study in a cool temper the course of recent South African politics in the columns of the _Times_, or, better still, in those of that excellent magazine for the discussion of Imperial affairs, the _Round Table_, will conclude that extraordinary progress has been made towards racial reunion, and that in this respect no serious peril threatens South Africa. The settlement, by friendly compromise at the end of the last session, of the very th.o.r.n.y question of language in the education of children, is a good example of what good-will can accomplish under free inst.i.tutions. By a laboured construction of fragments of speeches culled from the utterances of exceptionally vehement partisans, it would be still possible to make up a theory of the "disloyalty" of the South African Dutch. It would have been equally possible for a painstaking British student of the _Sydney Bulletin_ within recent memory to start a panic over the imminent "loss" of Australia. Some people think that Canada is as good as "lost" now. Yet the Empire has never been so strong or so united as to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] Cd. 2479, 1905.
[36] Cd. 2400, 1905.
[37] "It is true that in the case of Canada full responsible government was conceded, a few years after a troublous period culminating in a brief armed rising, to a population composed of races then not very friendly to each other, though now long since happily reconciled. But the Canadas had by that time enjoyed representative inst.i.tutions for over fifty years, the French-Canadians had since the year 1763 been continuously British subjects, and the disorders which preceded Lord Durham's Mission and the subsequent grant of self-government could not compare in any way with a war like that of 1899-1902. It is also the fact that in the United Colony of Upper and Lower Canada, during the period of 1840-1867, parties were formed mainly upon the lines of races, and that, as the representatives of the races were in number nearly balanced, stability of Government was not attained, a difficulty which was not overcome until the Federation of 1867, accompanied by the relegation of provincial affairs to provincial Legislatures, placed the whole political Const.i.tution of Canada upon a wider basis."
Few would gather from the first sentence that the races were "not very friendly to each other" precisely because they lived under a coercive political system; and that, in the long-run, they were "happily reconciled" because they received responsible government. Nor could it be deduced from the obscure reference lower down to the union of the two Provinces that the Union was the one blot upon Durham's scheme, the one point in which, fearing the predominance of a French majority in Lower Canada, he shrank from his own principles and recommended an unworkable Union which tended to encourage the formation "of parties on the lines of races." From the further allusion to the Federal Union of 1867, no one would imagine that that great scheme was founded on a cessation of racial antipathy inside the Quebec Province, and on a voluntary recognition among all races and parties that it was best for that Province to have a local autonomy of its own, parallel with that of the Ontario Province and under the supreme central authority of the Dominion.
[38] February 26, March 27, 1906.
CHAPTER VIII
THE a.n.a.lOGY
Let the reader endeavour to see the closely related stories of Ireland and of these more distant communities as a whole, undistracted by the varying degrees of their proximity to the Mother Country, making his study one of men and laws, and remembering that Ireland was the first and nearest of the British Colonies. Does not she become a convex mirror, in which, swollen to unnatural proportions, the mistakes of two centuries are reflected? Principles of government universal in their nature, transcending geography, and painfully evolved in more distant parts of the Empire, we have thrown to the winds in Ireland. Economic evils, resembling, in however distant a degree, those of Ireland, have irritated and r.e.t.a.r.ded every community in which they have been allowed to take root. A sound agrarian system has been the primary need of every country. To take the closest parallel, if absentee proprietorship and insecurity of tenure kept little Prince Edward Island, peacefully and legally settled, backward and disturbed for a century, it is not surprising that Ireland, submitted to confiscation, the Penal Code, and commercial rum, did not flourish under a land system beside which that of Prince Edward Island was a paradise. Tardy redress of the worst Irish abuses is no defence of the system which created them and sustained them with such ruinous results. No white community of pride and spirit would willingly tolerate the grotesque form of Crown Colony administration, founded on force, and now tempered by a kind of paternal State Socialism, under which Ireland lives to-day. Unionism for Ireland is anti-Imperialist. Its upholders strenuously opposed colonial autonomy, and but yesterday were pa.s.sionately opposing South African autonomy.
To-day colonial autonomy is an axiom. But Ireland is a measure of the depth of these convictions. There would be no Empire to idealize if their Irish principles had been applied just a little longer to any of the oversea States which const.i.tute the self-governing Colonies of to-day. As it is, these principles have wrought great and perhaps lasting mischief which, in the righteous glow of self-congratulation upon what we are accustomed to call our constructive political genius, we are too apt to overlook. It was bad for America to pa.s.s through that phase of agitation and discord which preceded the revolutionary war. It was demoralizing for the Canadas to be driven into rebellion by the vices of ascendancy government. Mr. Gladstone, speaking of Australian autonomy, was right in satirizing the "miserable jargon" about fitting men for political privileges, and in demonstrating the harm done by withholding those privileges. And the Irish race all over the world, fine race as it is, would be finer still if Ireland had been free.
The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty"
and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples 12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a pecuniary advantage?
Have Unionists really no better prescription for the const.i.tutional difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one of them.
We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, "Trust, and you will be trusted." But then we have to meet pessimists of two descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical. The honest pessimist (often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says: "The Irish in Ireland are an incurably criminal race. They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from Anglo-Saxons everywhere. Air and soil are unaccountable. The Union policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable necessity. It is sound, now and for all time." The cynical pessimist, on the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that it is too late to change. "We have gone too far, raised pa.s.sions we cannot allay." I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist.
The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter the theory of original sin. And to the cynical pessimist, who is a reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as well as to the conquered), I would only say: "Use your common sense."
These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament, always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous. In 1893, when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish alliance was the fear. Now it is the other way, and the _Spectator_ has been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to France. In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet in Belfast Lough--at whose invitation he did not explain, though he probably did not intend to insult Ulster. This wild talk has not even the merit of a strategical foundation. It belongs to another age.
Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one. Our fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters, including St. George's Channel, our situation is desperate, whether Ireland is friendly or hostile. We guarantee the independent existence of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland could conceivably entail; but we do not claim, as a consequence, to control the Executive of Belgium and remove her Parliament to Westminster, in order to be quite sure that the Belgians are not intriguing against us with Germany.
Germany, our alarmists fear, is to invade Ireland, and Ireland is to greet the invaders with open arms. The same prophecy was being made not more than three years ago of the South African Dutch. After asking for a century and a half to manage her own affairs, the Irish are not likely to ask to be ruled by Germans. The German strategists are men of common sense. If they were fortunate enough to gain the command of the sea, they could make no worse mistake than to dissipate their energies on Ireland.
Perhaps it is a waste of time to attempt to destroy these foolish myths.
Let those that are sceptical about the effect of Home Rule in producing friendlier feelings between Ireland and Great Britain consider in a reasonable spirit the commonplace question of mutual interests. What is the really practical significance of Ireland's proximity to England?
This, that their material interests are indissociably intertwined. If it is "safe," as the phrase goes, to entrust Australia with Home Rule, surely it is safer still to entrust Ireland with it. Has Ireland anything to gain by separation? Clearly nothing. Has she anything to lose? Much. Most of her trade is with Great Britain. British credit is of enormous value to her. The Imperial forces are of less proportionate value to her because her external trade is small; but she willingly supplies a large and important part of their personnel; she shares in their glorious traditions; and if it is a case of protection for her trade, she will get no protection elsewhere.
How idle are these calculations of profit and loss! The truth is that Ireland has taken her full share in winning and populating the Empire.
The result is hers as much as Britain's. Mr. Redmond spoke for his countrymen last May[39] in saying: "We, as Irishmen, are not prepared to surrender our share in the heritage [that is, the British Empire] which our fathers created." That is sound sentiment and sound sense. It is the view taken by the Colonies, where Irishmen are known, respected, and understood, and where the support for Home Rule, based on personal experience of its blessings, has been, and remains, consistent and strong. Indeed, we miss the significance of that support if we do not realize that Irish Home Rule is an indispensable preliminary to the closer union of the various parts of the Empire. Let us add the wider generalization that it is an indispensable preliminary to the closer union of all the English-speaking races. It may be fairly computed that a fifth of the present white population of the United States is of Irish blood.[40] American opinion, as a whole, so far as it is directed towards Ireland and away from a host of absorbing domestic problems, is favourable to Home Rule. Irish-American opinion has never swerved, although it has become more sober, as the material condition of Ireland has improved, and the interests of Irish-Americans themselves have become more closely identified with those of their adopted country.
Fenianism is altogether extinct. The extreme claim for the total separation of Ireland from Great Britain is now no more than a sentimental survival among a handful of the older men, of the fierce hatreds provoked by the miseries and horrors of an era which has pa.s.sed away.[41] Even Mr. Patrick Ford and the _Irish World_ have moderated their tone, and where that tone is still inflammatory it is not representative of Irish-American opinion. I have studied with a good deal of care the columns of that journal for some months back, smiling over the imaginary terrors of the nervous people on this side of the Atlantic who are taught by their party Press to believe that Mr. Patrick Ford is going to dynamite them in their beds. Any liberal-minded student of history and human nature would p.r.o.nounce the whole propaganda perfectly harmless. But the sane instinct that Ireland should have a local autonomy of her own, an instinct common to the whole brotherhood of nations which have sprung from these sh.o.r.es, lasts undiminished and takes shape, quite rightly and naturally, as it takes shape in the Colonies, in financial support of the Nationalist party in Ireland.
Anti-British sentiment in the United States, once a grave international danger, is that no longer; but it does still represent an obstacle to the complete realization of an ideal which all patriotic men should aim at: the formation of indestructible bonds of friendship between Great Britain and the United States. Nor must it be forgotten that the calm and reasonable character of Irish-American opinion is due in a large degree to confidence in the ultimate success of the const.i.tutional movement here for Home Rule. Every successive defeat of that policy tends to embitter feeling in America.
Oh, for an hour of intelligent politics! The old choice is before us--to make the best or the worst of the state of opinion in America; to disinter from ancient files of the _Irish World_ sentences calculated to inflame an ignorant British audience; or to say in sensible and manly terms: "The situation is more favourable than it has been for a century past for the settlement of just Irish claims."
FOOTNOTES:
[39] At Woodford, May 27, 1911.
[40] This is a very general statement. No figures exist for an accurate computation. The Census of 1910 gives the total population of the United States, white and coloured, as 91,272,266, of whom nearly 9,000,000 are negroes. The figures about countries of origin are not yet available.
The statistical abstract of the United States (1908) gives the total number of immigrants from Ireland from 1821 to 1908 as 4,168,747 (the large majority of whom must have been of marriageable age), but does not estimate the subsequent increase by marriage, and takes no account of the immigration prior to 1821, which was very large, especially in the period preceding the Revolutionary War of 1775-1782. At the Census of 1900 Irishmen actually _born in Ireland_ and then resident in the United States are stated to have been 1,618,567, as compared with 93,682 from Wales, 233,977 from Scotland, and 842,078 from England.
[41] I am especially indebted for information to Mr. Hugh Sutherland, of the _North American_ (Philadelphia), to Mr. Rodman Wanamaker, of the same city, to Mr. Frank Sanborn, of Concord, and to Mr. John O'Callaghan, of Boston.