PART III. CONTEMPORARY VIEWS

XIV.—Irish Nationalism And Liberal Principle. BY PROFESSOR L. T. HOBHOUSE

All through the nineteenth century the cause of subject nationalities was a constant stimulus to British Liberalism. Successive generations hoped and feared, wept and rejoiced with the rebels of Greece, of Italy, of Hungary, of Poland, of the Balkans. Their successes and failures were events of moment in the calendar of British Liberalism, for they were recognised as essential parts of the democratic movement, and the democratic cause was in that century looked upon as one all the world over. Nor was this sentiment ineffective. The moral support of England was in those days recognised as an asset to a cause. Individuals gave direct and tangible assistance, and there were even times when diplomacy moved. Nationalism, therefore, lay close to the heart of Liberalism. Yet there was all the time one nationality whose claims were not so readily understood as those of Greek or Italian, Pole or Bulgar. Ireland was raising a cry, protesting against grievances, formulating demands, which to impartial ears sounded very like those of other subject peoples. Here it seemed was an oppressed nationality at the British Liberal’s own door, with grievances which he could redress by his own efforts if he would. Conscious—perhaps a little too conscious—of the rectitude of his intentions, the British Liberal had some difficulty in seeing himself in the light of an oppressor. But under Mr. Gladstone’s leadership he learned his lesson in two stages. He began by learning that there were very real grievances to be redressed, grievances resulting from the political subordination of Ireland, in particular the grievances of the Church Establishment and of the land system. But in the course of his remedial efforts he learned further that though oppressive government may do much to hold a nationality together, the redress of grievances does not necessarily loosen the bonds of national unity. While the Government of 1880-85 still oscillated between concession and coercion, the more adventurous minds began to realize that what they had preached for Italy, Hungary, and Poland must in its due measure, and with all reasonable regard to variation of circumstances, be offered to the Irish people. They were ready for the second stage upon which Mr. Gladstone entered at the end of 1885, and in which, after a brief and memorable struggle, he carried with him the bulk of the Liberal Party. They had learned that the solution of the Irish question lay not in repressing Irish nationality, but in trusting it with the responsibility of self-government.

The Unionist leaders who defeated Mr. Gladstone had nevertheless learnt from him the first of these two lessons. They acquired by degrees a working knowledge of the material grievances of Ireland, and bit by bit they dealt with them, confident that by so doing they would undermine the foundations of the national demand. They reached the first stage of Liberal education, but refused to advance beyond it. Time, however, has declared against them. The twenty years of resolute government which Lord Salisbury once demanded have gone by, broken only by the three years in the ’nineties, when Liberals held office without legislative power. Ireland is orderly, and, by comparison with the past, prosperous. But Ireland is still Nationalist. The result is to leave the main arguments for Home Rule standing, while several of the old arguments against it are weakened or brought to naught. The Irish community is economically more vigorous, and so far more capable of self-support than it was in 1886. It is no longer a society which can be represented as honeycombed with conspiracies, or given up to disorder. It is no longer in the grip of a land system which necessitated an agrarian revolution, either as the precursor or as the first act of a self-governing Parliament. It is no longer so overtaxed that to maintain the fiscal balance with Great Britain would be to impose a permanent tribute on the smaller and poorer island. But it remains Nationalist, and the unsatisfied national sentiment of Ireland remains not only a reproach to British Liberalism, but a flaw in the fabric of our national security.

I dwell on the permanence of Irish nationalism, because in dealing with nationality, we are confronted with one of those political forces which may be very real and very stubborn, but which yet are neither measurable in statistics nor easily compressed into the four corners of a rigid definition. What precisely is a nationality, it may be asked, and why should it be so much a matter of concern to Liberals? Liberalism is for self-government, it is true, but, provided that all parts of a country or of an empire are equally represented on a democratic franchise in the governing assembly of the whole, what has the principle of liberty to say further in the matter? Why should it be on the side of division or against unity? It is not ever so. On the contrary, national jealousies, rival patriotisms are constantly thwarting another branch of Liberal endeavour. It must be frankly recognised that the development of nationality in Europe is in large measure responsible for the modern recrudescence of militarism. As a policy of peace and international goodwill, Liberalism has to make some sacrifices, and take some risks in upholding nationality. What does it gain in return? If its ideal is humanitarian, why must it countenance the national idea, self-centred and intolerant as the idea too often becomes?

The answer to this question is written in the history of the dealings of Governments with subject nationalities, Irish or other. The primary object of political Liberalism is to found Government on freedom. This end is not compassed at a stroke by the simple method of establishing a well-oiled representative machine. It involves, to deal with externals only, freedom of speech, of writing, of meeting, of organisation. It involves the security of personal rights as much against the Executive Government as against any private aggression. But when a larger nation forcibly incorporates a smaller one in its system it is easy to see the difficulty of maintaining order on these lines. A free government in the full sense of the term must be founded on the voluntary adhesion of the mass of the people. This adhesion is not necessarily impaired by the conflicts of interest or conviction which are the inevitable incidents of public life in any community, and which compel now one section and now another to submit to laws or acts of government which it resents. As long as each class feels that its claims, even if overborne in the end, will not be rejected without adequate understanding and fair consideration, there exist the elements of government by consent. But a smaller nation forcibly incorporated in a larger one does not feel this. The very constitution which is the pride of its masters is the badge of its own subjection. It may have equality of franchise, but its representatives are in a permanent minority. By history, by sentiment, perhaps by religion, race, or language, it has acquired differences of tone and habit. It regards public questions from a different angle. Its emphasis is different, its essentials are trifles to other people, and their essentials are its trifles. Its problems, even when on the surface they appear the same, have a different historic background, are interwoven with special associations, complicated with local and peculiar sympathies and animosities. With these nuances the smaller nation can never hope that the majority will deal, because the majority can never understand them. Not only so but the smaller people will have a pride, memory, and hope of its own. It may have a larger patriotism if its self respect is first consulted, but as long as its independent being is ignored its only collective ambition will be to assert itself. Thus in the subject people the milk of social feeling is turned to gall. All that leads a free people to respect law, to support Government, to take pride in public prosperity, to sacrifice personal to common interest, will work in this case only towards discord and civil strife, and the best men become in a sense the worst citizens. At least they become the most resolute opponents of the established order. The more opposition develops, and this means the more life flourishes in the subject people, the more the tension increases. Presently definite obstructions arise in the machinery of Government and the ruling democracy, however liberal in its original intentions, is driven into “exceptional” legislation. Constitutional rights are curtailed. Legal securities are suspended, freedom of speech is withheld. These disabilities may either be confined to the disaffected people, in which case the principle of equal rights disappears, or to save appearances as to equality they are made universal, in which case general liberty is impaired. In either event this original condition is set at naught. The essentials of political liberty are violated. Wise and moderate statesmanship may mitigate the mischief. Reactionary statesmanship may inflame it. But the seeds of trouble will always be there as long as the foreign body is embedded in the organic tissues.

But it may be asked, are we always to give way to sectional feeling? History has interwoven many races and they must surely learn to live together. What of French and British in Canada, or of British and Dutch in South Africa? What again of Ulster? If Ireland is a nation, does the nation include the Protestant half of Ulster or does it not? If yes, how can any of our tests of unity stand? If not, how can we recognize Ireland as one nation and not as two? Let us take these questions in turn, and let us consider first the measure and importance to be attached to national sentiment. We are dealing here, it has been admitted, with a force which it is impossible to measure _a príorí_ by any external tests. We seem able to judge it only by the event. If in fact Irish nationalism had yielded to the redress of definite grievances, if it had been practically possible to kill Home Rule by kindness, Unionist statesmanship would have been justified. I do not say justified by success, for success is not a judge giving decision by rules of equity. It would have been justified rather in the sense that it would have been experimentally proved to have been founded on a true interpretation of the case. The Unionist case—at its best—was that Irish nationalism was a passing and superficial sentiment. At its core were certain real grievances, but it was swollen into a mass of imposing appearances, but of loose and flabby texture. The plan was to remove the grievances with one hand, while with the other every ebullition of sentiment into unruly speech or action was steadily repressed. Had the plan succeeded it would have shown that Irish nationality was an illusion, or at best a thin and insubstantial product of a passing historical phase. In so far as it has failed it has shown that Irish nationality is a reality, deep rooted in the past, and to be reckoned with permanently in the future. In a word the test of nationality lies in history. If the life of one people can be absorbed into that of another so that free Government can proceed unimpeded, not violated by the habitual resort to “exceptional legislation,” the union is justified by the event. If on the other hand the demand for autonomy remains clear and persistent, through evil report and good report, through coercion and concession, through adversity and prosperity, in days of disorder when despair has reigned and in law abiding times rendered calm by hope, there is the proof that nationality is a vital principle, and a permanent force with which liberty must make its account.

How is it then that by the gift of autonomy, time has succeeded in fusing French and British peoples into the nation of Canada, and why do we see a similar fusion proceeding between British and Dutch in South Africa? The question arises partly out of the common confusion between race and nationality. Race is a matter of physical kinship, and kinship is one of the bonds that tend to unite people and at the same time in a measure to separate them from others. But it is only one bond among many. Most modern nations, our own conspicuously, are blends of many races, and are united not so much by common ancestry as by the possession of a common country, common interests, common traditions, a common mode of life and sentiment. Further, where two or more races are intermixed, there is no means of endowing them with independent Governments. The same writ must run over the whole territory. Hence there are three possibilities. One is that one race should hold the reins of power, as generally happens when white and black live together. Another is that the country should be governed from without, and this will generally mean that the administration leans on one of the races within, and makes of it an “Ascendency” caste. The third is that the two races should seek to live together and govern themselves with mutual toleration. This is the experiment which has succeeded in Canada, and is succeeding so far as the white races are concerned in South Africa, and which is to be tried in Ireland. In proportion as it succeeds the two races blend, and a new nationality is formed.

But still it may be asked, why should not Ulster claim to be a nation? True, she is but a fragment of Ireland, but then Ireland is but a fragment of the United Kingdom, and St. George’s Channel is not so very formidable a dividing line as to make all the difference. Our whole argument, it may be said, has rested on the rights of minorities, and Ulster is a minority. Why should not Ulster also be a nation? This at once suggests the counter-question, does Ulster claim to be a nation? Let us bear in mind that the term Ulster is a mode of speech, and that what is meant by it for these purposes is half Ulster, or the city of Belfast with some adjacent counties. Does Belfast, we should more rightly ask, profess and call itself a nation? Not if its desire is, what we have always understood it to be, to remain directly subject to the British Parliament. It is in fact, the focus of an old, but decayed Ascendency caste, and its desire is to retain what it can save from the wreck of the Ascendency system. With this demand Liberalism can have no sort of sympathy. If Belfast would condescend to put her case with a little more moderation, and a little allowance for the two sides of the question, it would be easier to meet her views. As long as she declines to make her account with the fact that the great majority of Ireland is Nationalist, and that British Liberalism is resolved to do justice at last to nationalism, she rules herself out of the discussion, and leaves it to British statesmen to act for her rather than with her. Belfast is a Protestant and industrial centre in a land which is predominantly Catholic and agricultural. On both counts she may fear some inequality of treatment, and on both may legitimately receive guarantees. On the major question, that of religion, every Home Rule scheme has proposed ample guarantees and the present Bill does not fall short under this head. The problem of financial and commercial interests is more complex, but it is difficult to see how an Irish Parliament, responsible for the financial soundness of the country, could do anything to cripple the industries of Belfast without being fully aware that in so doing it would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The discussion of this question, however, I must leave to those who are dealing with the financial provisions of the Bill. On the main point we may ask whether, if the Bill is to pass, Belfast will deliberately and persistently demand to be left out of its scope, and separated from Ireland in the sense and degree in which Ireland will be separated from the direct control of Great Britain. If such a demand is put forward not merely in order to wreck Home Rule, but as a substantive proposal seriously intended, it will constitute a new fact. Belfast will then be, indeed, claiming recognition as a miniature nationality, and the claim will be fairly weighed. At present it can only be regarded as highly improbable that such a claim should be maintained or even put forward except in a fighting mood. That Belfast should sustain her opposition to the whole Bill is perfectly natural, but given that there is to be Home Rule as one of the fixed conditions of a settlement, her natural position is that of a centre and rallying point for the dispersed forces of Irish Protestantism. That this is her true function in the Irish Parliament, Belfast must be as well aware as she is that her influence in that Parliament will be more than proportionate to her numerical strength.

We have spoken of nationality as a centrifugal force, as one of the influences tending to division. But there is another side to the question. When a nation obtains self-government it undertakes a new responsibility. It must keep its own peace, balance its own finances, have regard to its own common economic interests. This common responsibility does not make for division. It makes for unity. It enforces a sober regard for the claims of each part. It dictates a measure of mutual consideration which is not developed as long as one party within the country is taught to lean upon an outside power. In the past history of Ireland each party has alike been taught constantly to look to Westminster for its wants, to Westminster for redress of grievances, to Westminster perhaps for vengeance on its foes or at lowest for the means of keeping them in order. This is not the atmosphere in which mutual toleration grows. When Irishmen understand that they must go of themselves unaided and uncontrolled from without they will learn like other men that they must pull together if they are to keep off the rocks. The national element will have the majority in the Irish Parliament, and the first object of this element will be to make Home Rule a success. That they can do only by securing the co-operation, even if it be the grudging and unadmitted co-operation, of the opposition. But Belfast is not bound to content herself with these general probabilities. She has only to formulate intelligible demands consistent with the establishment of a Dublin Parliament to be assured of a respectful and considerate hearing. If she would be content to rest her case on the same basis as that of Irish nationalism itself, recognising that nationalism must have its rights and submitting only that she in turn is a lesser nation within a nation, it would be possible to deal with her. As long as she stands on her own claims she rules herself out of the discussion.

There are many who regard the recognition of nationality as at best a regrettable necessity. They lay stress on those centrifugal tendencies that we have admitted and they feel that the greater need of mankind is for unity. But the unity which they desire can only come through the development of life in many different centres and with luxuriant divergencies of character. The doctrine of Mazzini that every nation had its own peculiar function to fulfil in the life of humanity was not pure fancy. It is easy to recognise that the leading modern nations have each, in fact, contributed something distinctive, something that would have been blurred and dulled if all had been of one speech and under one rule. Division has meant unrest, friction, war, and suffering. But it has been a necessary condition of collective vitality. Self-respect and self-confidence are necessary to a people that are to do great things, and these they cannot enjoy to the full so long as they are conscious of a mastery that galls their pride. Ireland has contributed to our literature her peculiar strain of humour and of romance, tinged with the melancholy of her historic ill-fortune. The graver tone and gentler view she will never lose, for they belong to a people who will always have behind them the memory of the centuries of that undeserved suffering which opens the eyes of men to the nature of the human tragedy. But the distinctive Irish quality may henceforward be shot with a brighter thread catching the light from her assured future as a nation. As a nation she has her part to play in the English-speaking Commonwealth, questioning the successful practicality of a dominant people with the irony, and tempering its prose with the romance born in the centuries of her probation in the valley of the shadow.

XV.—The Imperial Parliament

(I) The State Of Parliamentary Business. BY CECIL HARMSWORTH, M.P.

There is one argument for conferring self-government on the people of Ireland that appeals with irresistible force to many ordinary members of Imperial Parliament. This is the urgent necessity for relieving Imperial Parliament of “provincial” business and setting it free to devote its best energies to the ever-increasing legislative and administrative needs of the empire.

Every year the amount of business that falls to be transacted in the House of Commons grows in volume. Every year fresh proofs are afforded that the legislative machinery of the House of Commons is not only unequal to the strain imposed by the growing volume of business, but that it is incapable even of dealing effectively with the affairs that have always been regarded as coming within its special province. For instance, the House of Commons has practically lost all control over the details of finance. It is true that a fairly generous allowance of Parliamentary time is allotted to the Estimates, but the House rarely, if ever, comes to close grips with the nation’s balance sheet, or indeed with the details of any particular vote. Yet a vigilant supervision over finance is one of the primary functions of the House of Commons.

How far the recently established Select Committee on Estimates will be able to assist in promoting national economy remains to be seen. The creation of such a body has not met with universal approval in the House itself. As in the case of all parliamentary Committees, no matter how influential their _personnel_, the House as a whole may not be found willing to accept the decisions of the new Select Committee as authoritative.

In the sphere of Bill legislation, the condition of things is even worse. Notwithstanding the desperate shifts which have been resorted to in recent years to secure the dispatch of business, we are confronted in every succeeding session with greater congestion in the House of Commons. Big Bills are hustled through with the aid of every undesirable expedient known to parliamentary procedure, and little Bills in pathetic shoals are massacred at the end of each session. The plain fact is that we have not sufficient time in which to do anything properly. No matter what strain we impose on the physical endurance of Members, no matter how far we invade the undoubted privileges of the House of Commons as a deliberative assembly, Parliament is less and less able to fulfil its manifold duties as the paramount legislature in a world-wide state. The damage to local interests is scarcely less serious. Irish finance, for instance, and Irish legislation suffer from the disability of Imperial Parliament to give them due consideration.

Let it not be supposed that the House of Commons is unconscious of its own demerits as a legislative machine. It is nearly sixty years since Sir John Pakington’s Committee was appointed to consider “whether by any alteration in the forms and proceedings of this House, the dispatch of public business would be more effectually promoted.” Committees with similar references were set up in 1861, in 1878, and in 1886. As a result of these inquiries two Standing Committees were established at the instance of Mr. W. H. Smith in 1888. The relegation of measures of the second rank to the two Standing Committees was expected to lighten the legislative burdens of the House of Commons very considerably, and this result was in some measure achieved. But the problem of congestion was so far from being solved that it was thought necessary to appoint yet another Committee (Sir Henry Fowler’s) in 1906. This Committee recommended the setting up of four Standing Committees, and it is under this system that we are now working. With considerable diffidence I advance the opinion that an even larger use of Standing Committees might be made than has yet been attempted. Part II. of the National Insurance Bill was sent “upstairs,” and the result amply justified what was regarded by cautious Parliamentarians as a daring experiment. But this part of the Insurance Bill was in a large degree uncontroversial. The House of Commons is jealous, and naturally jealous, of its rights over controversial measures of the first class, and has never yet shown any readiness to accept as conclusive the decisions of Standing Committees. Nor should it be forgotten that attendance on a Standing Committee imposes a severe strain on members who are also keenly interested in the business of the House itself. By the time Mr. Speaker takes the chair at a quarter to three o’clock, the members of such Committees have often completed a very fair day’s work.

Meanwhile, other and more questionable expedients for facilitating the dispatch of business were coming into general use. It is to Mr. Joseph Ronayne, a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the ’seventies of last century, that we owe the policy of organised and scientific obstruction in the House of Commons, and, as a consequence, the drastic use of the closure. Mr. Ronayne was a back-bench member of the Irish Party, of unobtrusive manners but of settled opinions. He was profoundly dissatisfied with the unaggressive tactics of Mr. Isaac Butt, the then leader of the Irish Party.

“We will never make any impression on the House,” he said, “until we interfere in English business. At present Englishmen manage their own affairs in their own way, without any interference from us. Then, when we want to get our business through, they stop us. We ought to show them that two can play at this game of obstruction. Let us interfere in English legislation; let us show them that if we are not strong enough to get our own work done, we are strong enough to prevent them from getting theirs.”(159)

Mr. Ronayne found in Mr. Joseph Gillis Biggar an apt pupil. Mr. Biggar used to say: “The English stop our Bills. Why don’t we stop their Bills? That’s the thing to do. No Irish Bills; but stop English Bills. No legislation; that’s the policy, sir, that’s the policy. Butt’s a fool, too gentlemanly; we’re all too gentlemanly.” Mr. Biggar’s oratory is happily now only a tradition. It was not good oratory of any kind, but it effected its purpose. More skilful exponents of the art of obstruction have appeared since Mr. Biggar’s day, but none more successful. The expedient may have been justifiable in the case of a small minority struggling unavailingly against an overwhelming and indifferent majority. It is quite true that during the mild reign of Mr. Butt the British political parties treated legislative proposals emanating from the Irish Parliamentary Party with scant courtesy. It is equally true that obstruction in the House of Commons proved a potent incentive to the more careful consideration of Irish claims. We have travelled far since those days, but obstruction remains as one of the most formidable weapons in the armoury of an opposition. The British political parties have, when in opposition, made full use of a device that Mr. Butt regarded as “undignified, useless, and mischievous.” And not only is obstruction with us, but its hateful if necessary corollary, the closure, has tended every year to become more oppressive. The parliamentary historian of the future will note that it was on June 10th, 1887, that “closure by guillotine,” that monstrous variant of an accursed type, was first proposed in the House of Commons. A few days later the guillotine fell on several of the most important clauses of a new Crimes Bill. So closely associated with Ireland are the most recent and most detrimental changes in the procedure that governs the debates in our Imperial Parliament!

Obstruction or no obstruction, closure by guillotine or by compartments has come to stay as long as our Parliament attempts the otherwise impossible task of legislating for several provinces, and an empire at the same time. Nowadays almost every great Bill is subjected sooner or later to the guillotine. Let us see what this means. A debate in Committee, let us say, has been in progress for some days or weeks. Discussion has been free, and only occasionally, perhaps, has the ordinary form of closure been exercised. A bare half dozen clauses have been disposed of. There remain four or five score more clauses and a motley group of schedules. It becomes obvious that unless something is done to speed up the machinery, the Bill will never get through the House. Then it is that the leader of the House braces himself to his most unwelcome task, and, rising in his place, proposes a rigid time-table for the discussion of the remaining clauses and schedules. A certain number of days are allotted, and to each portion of time is allotted a section of the Bill. Thus, a whole Parliamentary day may be allotted to three clauses. The whole of this day, perhaps, is spent in debating the first line of the first of the three clauses. However this may be, the guillotine falls with remorseless severity at the end of the allotted day, and only Government amendments to the undiscussed parts of the three clauses are taken. Could anything be more clumsy? Was it possible for the ingenuity of man to invent a less businesslike remedy for the congestion of business in Parliament? Indeed, the absurdity of the system is universally acknowledged. I know of no more distressing spectacle than that of the leader of the House of Commons exerting himself to excuse a policy that he, in common with all who reverence the House of Commons, holds in detestation. On such occasions as this, the arguments advanced for what is confessedly a rude invasion of the rights of free speech are of a set pattern. It is urged that the debate has now been in progress for so many days or weeks, and that little advance has been made. Regret is expressed that resort should be had to such an unpopular device as the guillotine. But by what other means, it is asked, is a Government to carry controversial measures? After all, the time-table proposed is a generous one, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, and is certainly more generous than that allowed by the party opposite on such and such an occasion in the past. The leader of the Opposition, in rising, lays his hand on his heart and calls the House to witness that if on former occasions he has made use of the guillotine, he has done so far less frequently than the head of the present administration, and with an entire absence of the levity that marks the present proceedings. The guillotine resolution is carried. There are ineffectual ebullitions of wrath on the opposition side of the House, and there are sinking hearts on the Ministerial Benches. On every such occasion it is felt in all parts of the House that a deadly blow has been aimed at the dignity and the prestige of Parliament.

But the House of Commons is meant to be a deliberative assembly! It holds still the highest place among the democratic assemblies of the world, and its rules and forms and customs have been adopted with unquestioning veneration, wherever democratic communities have set up legislating for themselves. In point of _personnel_, recent Parliaments have shown no falling off from the standards of other days. In manners, in public spirit, in devotion to parliamentary duty, and in the range of their knowledge and experience, the members of the present Parliament compare most favourably with their predecessors in any Parliament in our history. If they are gagged and closured and guillotined, it is not because their speeches would be unworthy of the place or of the occasion. The simple reason is that there is no time for them. The mother of Parliaments is trying to do the work of four or five Parliaments, and is signally failing in the attempt.

Let this be noted. Though the outcry against the guillotine closure, whenever it is proposed to be exercised, is loudest on the opposition side of the House, the guillotine operates just as much to the disadvantage of private members on the Government side. They are expected to support the Government Bill in broad outline, but they are under no obligation to support it in every detail. They entertain, and are entitled to entertain, their own views as to points of detail, and are no more willing than members opposite that their pet amendments should be sacrificed arbitrarily at the end of an allotted day. Indeed, since they are, _ex hypothesi_, devoted to the main principles of the Bill, they are likely to be even more solicitous than members of the Opposition that the Bill should be as perfect in detail as in its general scope. Little wonder that under the operation of the guillotine, private Ministerial members tend more and more to become passive and, in the long run, indifferent spectators of the drama that is enacted on the floor of the House when a great Bill is going through, and it is in this respect and not in any other, I think, that modern Parliaments are inferior to others.

There are other aspects of the question that might be dwelt on at some length, if this were the proper occasion. Since it is recognised in all parts of the House that a great measure is not and cannot be adequately discussed under the guillotine closure, a dangerous practice has grown up of leaving difficult matters to be decided by Government departments or by new authorities set up under the Act. Under the National Insurance Act, for instance, the Commissioners are invested for certain purposes with all the legislative prerogatives of the three estates of the realm! I must leave that matter to the constitutional authorities. I am concerned for the moment merely to show that the guillotine closure is a clumsy, unbusinesslike, and dangerous expedient that cannot be regarded as having solved in any satisfactory degree the eternal problem of congestion in a Parliament that attempts to cope at the same time with the local affairs of three or four provinces, and with the affairs of an empire.

Relief might doubtless be found in the more frequent use of what is known as the “kangaroo” closure. This method of dealing with business in Committee was first regularized in 1908. Under this system, power is given to the Chairman to select such Amendments as he believes to be really important, to the exclusion of others. The burden of responsibility thus thrown on the Chair is felt to be enormous, and it is chiefly on this account that the kangaroo closure has been very sparingly exercised.

I say that the setting up of four Standing Committees, and the institution of the guillotine closure have so far failed to relieve appreciably the pressure of business in the House of Commons. Another method has been tried that might reasonably have been expected to produce more fruitful results. I refer to the prolongation of the session of Parliament. In 1906 we had an autumn sitting. In 1907 we sat until August 28th. In 1908 we had an autumn sitting. In 1909 we sat for practically the whole year. The session of 1910 was agreeably diversified by a strenuously contested General Election at either end of it. In 1911 we had yet another autumn sitting, and this year we are threatened with a continuous session extending from February until Christmas time. True enough, a good part of the work of these sessions was wasted by the action of a House of Lords which has since lost some of its powers for obstructive mischief, but it will be observed that of the first class measures destroyed by the Lords, only two—the Education Bill (in a different form), and the Scotch Small Holders Bill—have subsequently made considerable demands on the attention of the House of Commons. The time gained by extending the sittings of these several Parliaments has been chiefly wanted for new legislation. Even if the House of Lords had found it convenient to pass the Liberal measures which it rejected, the pressure of business in the House of Commons must have necessitated the resort to autumn sittings in two or three of the years under consideration. Now, it is a commonplace that autumn sittings are permissible only in very exceptional circumstances. From the point of view of all Members of Parliament, autumn sittings are an unqualified disadvantage. Members, like other folk, want their holidays, and, unlike other folk, have constituencies to look after. Ministers of the Crown who are members of the House of Commons stand in even greater need of holidays than private members, and are not less under obligation to cultivate their constituencies. In addition, they need leisure for the preparation of the great Government measures that are to figure in the King’s Speech, Departmental Bills for the ensuing session, and generally for the overhauling of the work of their departments. It is astonishing that the work of the great administrative departments should have been done so well in recent years when regard is had to the extreme pressure under which Ministers have been working. If Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith had not had at their command an abundance of administrative talent of a high quality, there must have been during the last six years many cases of failure in the management of the important Parliamentary Offices of State. One of the chief functions of a Parliamentary Minister in charge of a department is the infusion of new ideas, the re-assembling and adaptation of old machinery, the bringing up to date of an organisation that may have served its purpose well in the past but is no longer adequate to the enlarged requirements of modern times. For such work as this there must be time for cool deliberation. It is scarcely possible for the most capable Minister to devise schemes of administrative reform amidst the excited rumours of the lobbies and the innumerable distractions of life in the House of Commons. Less responsible members of the House of Commons than Ministers find that it is well-nigh impossible to think clearly during the session of Parliament.

Other methods have been proposed for saving time in an overburdened House of Commons. There is the proposal that measures that have reached a certain incomplete stage in one session should be revived at the same stage in the next session of the same Parliament. A Select Committee of unusual authority discussed this matter in 1890. Among the members of the Committee were Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Goschen, Sir William Harcourt, the Marquis of Hartington, Mr. Dillon, Sir Edward Clarke, Mr. T. W. Russell, Mr. Labouchere, and Mr. Sexton. Proposals for abridging the procedure on partly considered Bills had been mooted in 1848, in 1861, and again in 1869, but the objects in view of the earlier Committees entirely differed from those of the Committee of 1890. The proposal emanated from the House of Lords, and the original design was to give the Upper House power to hang up Bills coming from the House of Commons. The Lords complained, as they have often complained since, that Bills were sent up to them at a period of the session too late to admit of the exercise of the Lords’ rights of revision and amendment. They urged, too, and with some force, that Bills were frequently sent up to them which had not been adequately discussed in the lower House. They desired, therefore, to possess themselves of the power to hold over such Bills to another session. Needless to say, such a proposal as this excited fierce opposition in the House of Commons, and the deliberations of 1848, 1861, and 1869 came to nothing. The Committee of 1890 set out with wholly different intentions. Its object was merely to obviate reiterated arguments in the House of Commons on the same subjects and to save the time of the House. Thanks in a large measure to Mr. Balfour’s advocacy the Committee reported that the carrying over of Bills should become the practice of the House, as it is indeed the practice of almost every Parliament in Europe. A formidable minority, however, led by Mr. Gladstone, reported against the proposal, and nothing has yet been done to give effect to the wishes of the majority. To this day the “massacre of the innocents” is a melancholy feature of our proceedings at the end of a session. I doubt myself whether “carrying over” will ever be adopted as a part of the established and regular practice of the House of Commons. Ministers look with cold disfavour on the proposal. They are generally suspicious of private members’ little Bills, and private members themselves are not ordinarily enthusiastic about the legislative bantlings of other private members.

One other remedy has been suggested for hastening the dispatch of business in the House of Commons—the limitation of speeches. For every member who made speeches in the House of Commons half a century ago fifty make speeches now. It is not, I think, that we are more loquacious than our ancestors or more greedy of the ready publicity that is accorded to any sort of speech in Parliament. Many interests are now represented in Parliament that were not directly represented at all in the earlier days, and the problems of a more numerous population and of a more complex civilisation make corresponding demands on the time of the House of Commons. The serious man who represents these great new interests in the House of Commons never consciously squanders the time of the House in unnecessary speech. No doubt the prevailing fashion of oratory is marked by diffuseness and lack of discipline, but it is to the comparatively modern scandal of deliberate obstruction by speech that we owe the guillotine and all its attendant evils. From time to time there has been earnest debate as to whether a time limit to speeches should be fixed. That any such policy is difficult of achievement is proved by the fact that even the existing Standing Order against irrelevance and tedious repetition has fallen into almost complete abeyance.

What is the ultimate remedy for the congestion of business in the House of Commons? Who can doubt that it is the delegation of provincial business to provincial assemblies? There has been, I say, no lack of expedients. The setting up of four Grand Committees, the institution of the guillotine as a regular feature of House of Commons procedure in regard to every first-class measure, the frequent resort to autumn sittings—these methods have been tried and found wanting. Little prospect of relief is afforded by any projected limitation of speeches or by the carrying over of Bills. Meanwhile, as we have seen, the legitimate claims on the attention of Parliament grow with the needs of a growing population and of an expanding empire. In part it is the problem of new wine in old bottles. Our Parliament was not constructed for its present purposes. Originally it was the legislature for England alone. The provincial affairs of Scotland were first imposed on it, and then those of Ireland. Concurrently, the management of an empire, as varied in its legislative and administrative requirements as the various climates it enjoys, has been added to our responsibilities. You may if you like regard our present House of Commons as an Imperial Legislature stooping from time to time to the consideration of provincial business, or as a provincial Parliament rising in its moments of inspiration to the discharge of high Imperial duties. The same Parliament that has to decide to-day some small matter of purely local Irish or Scottish concern must settle a national strike to-morrow, approve the naval strategy of the Empire, or frame the constitution for a people. To the executive that is responsible to the same Parliament are entrusted all the tremendous issues of peace and war. It is a supreme testimony to the genius of the British peoples for government that we have voyaged so far without shipwreck everywhere except in the region of Irish affairs.

By all admissions we have made a mess of Ireland. With singular and unwonted perverseness we have refused for more than a hundred years to apply to Ireland the principles of self-government that have justified their application in every province of the Empire that is mainly inhabited by people of our own race. We have risked and we have incurred the disaffection of the Irish themselves; we have imposed on them and on ourselves untold suffering and expense; we have imperilled the whole fabric of our Parliamentary institutions.

It is this last aspect of the problem to which earnest consideration is invited in these few pages. The efficiency of Imperial Parliament is a matter of Imperial concern. By no other means than by maintaining Imperial Parliament at the highest pitch of efficiency can we be assured of good government throughout the empire. I do not myself shrink from any of the logical consequences of the line of argument I have adopted. A truly Imperial Parliament representing England, Ireland and Scotland and, it may be, each of the more important Dependencies of the Crown—that is the goal towards which we should press. But the Irish claim, so far as the claims of the United Kingdom are concerned, was first presented, is most urgent, and must first be satisfied. If we could but rid our minds of party bias, Home Rule for Ireland would be universally regarded as the first step forward in the direction of Imperial efficiency. It is unquestionably a condition precedent to the re-establishment of our control over our own legislative machine.

(II) The Tendency Towards Legislative Disintegration. A Review Of The Statute Book. BY H. DE R. WALKER

The Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland was the end of a definite epoch of political concentration. England, Scotland, and Ireland had at last been brought under a single Parliament, with equal and complete legislative authority over the whole of the three Kingdoms. But Union was not accompanied by uniformity, especially in the case of Ireland. Ireland, when joined in a legislative union with Great Britain, was in fact left in possession of separate Administrative, Financial and Judicial institutions. With the separate judicial system I am not further concerned, but at a time when the grant of extended self-government to Ireland is under consideration, I contend that it is of great utility to observe how far Irish Administration and Irish Finance are actually distinct and separate at the present time. Moreover, whatever may have been the intention of the statesmen of the period of the Union, it has also been found to be necessary, owing to the diversity of the institutions, to pass in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, a large number of statutes solely applicable to Ireland. I do not assume that what is now separate should in every case be transferred to the new Irish Authority, nor that what is now done in common should not be so transferred; but I do contend that the existing differentiation should largely guide us in connection with the forthcoming proposals. On the other side, our opponents might of course urge that, as we have already got separate laws and separate administration for Ireland, we obtain under existing arrangements all the diversity that is required, and that we have herein an argument against Home Rule rather than in its favour.

We must, therefore, carry the matter a step further. We may say that the separate laws and separate administration, while not conclusive as to the need for Home Rule, will be found to provide a basis for its inception if it can be shown on other grounds to be desirable; but, as it is not my intention to enter upon the general merits or demerits of Home Rule, I pass on to submit the practical consideration that the separate laws and the separate administration for Ireland, as worked in connection with a single Parliament, not only work badly in themselves, but are prejudicial to the orderly development of Parliamentary government. This is my case, and if I can prove it, we should either do away with these separate arrangements or cease to work them in connection with a single Parliament. But it will be easy to prove further that the separate arrangements cannot now be consolidated. There is a continuous tendency to accentuate them in accordance with the requirements of the situation. We shall, therefore, be driven to the conclusion that we must have recourse to a separate Parliament for Ireland in order to be able to work these separate arrangements in a satisfactory manner.

In order to substantiate these contentions, I shall discuss the existing position as regards Irish Legislation, at the same time giving some attention to Finance and Administration in their legislative aspects. The uniformity in Anglo-Irish Finances which has been developed during the nineteenth century is still qualified by a certain differentiation. Separate departments of administration involve separate estimates of expenditure; and separate laws may involve separate grants of money.

The authors of the Act of Union did not attempt to establish uniformity between Great Britain and Ireland in the matter of either administration or finance, but they followed the precedent of the Union between England and Scotland in the concentration of all legislative powers in a single body, the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But Union did not necessarily mean uniformity, and the united Parliament found itself at once compelled to pass separate and different Acts for the several portions of the United Kingdom.

In this branch of our subject it will be convenient not to confine our attention to the separate Irish laws, but, since many laws are also passed separately for England and for Scotland, to take a wider view and consider how far Parliament legislates in common for the whole of the United Kingdom, and how far separately for one or more of its component parts. And it follows therefrom that any conclusions that we may form as to the delegation of legislative powers are likely to apply in kind if not in degree to England and Scotland as to Ireland. In the administrative sphere, of course, the position is by no means the same as between the three countries. Scotland has at present no important central department at Edinburgh other than its Local Government Board.

It was largely owing to the maintenance under the Union of the separate administration in Ireland, combined with the retention during the first sixteen years of the separate exchequers, that Parliament was obliged to legislate separately for the different portions of the United Kingdom. These were the years of the Napoleonic wars, when very heavy taxation was imposed; and, not only was a separate Act passed, according to the custom of the time, for each article that was to be taxed, but this taxation was, on account of the separate exchequers, imposed by separate Acts for Great Britain and for Ireland. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find that the most numerous Statutes of the first twenty years of the century were those whose application was confined to Great Britain or to Ireland, and that they considerably exceeded in number those which applied to the whole of the United Kingdom or to England alone. After the amalgamation of the exchequers in 1817, the annual average of Statutes applying to Great Britain dropped at once from thirty-five to seven, and gradually decreased still further, since most of the financial measures were passed thenceforward for the whole of the United Kingdom alike. But Ireland, in spite of the financial amalgamation, continued to call for a large amount of separate legislation, and the annual average of Statutes applying solely to Ireland dropped no more than from thirty-one in the decade 1811-20, to nineteen in the following decade, at which point it remained fairly constant during the greatest part of the nineteenth century. Throughout this period, the average annual number of what I call “United Kingdom” Statutes ranged between forty-nine in the decade 1861-70, and thirty-two in 1881-90, and of Statutes that applied solely to England between fifty-eight in 1881-90, and twenty-three in 1801-10. It should be added that the numbers are those of the Public Acts alone, and they would be much higher, particularly in the later years, if the Local and Private Acts were included in the enumeration. But the public Statutes are obviously alone relevant in any enquiry as to the extent to which the Union of the Parliaments has led to legislative uniformity, and it is very significant that, even upon these public matters, Parliament has been unable at any time since the Act of Union, to avoid the necessity for a large amount of separate legislation for Ireland.

The figures up to 1890 are taken from Mr. T. A. Spalding’s “Federation and Empire,” which contains many interesting particulars, and I have worked out the figures for the two succeeding decades, but not exactly on the same basis. Mr. Spalding includes the Provisional Order Confirmation Acts which were not distinguished from other Public Acts until the middle of last century, but I omit them as not partaking of the character of general legislation, and the number of separate Acts given for England, Scotland and Ireland is considerably reduced by this omission.

In my first table, which gives the total, not the annual average, I divide the Public General Acts into two wide categories: those, which I term “United Kingdom” Statutes, that apply to the Dominions, the Colonies, or India, as well as those which apply to the United Kingdom as a whole; and those, which I term “State” Statutes, that apply to England, Scotland or Ireland alone, to any two of these three countries, or, in a very few cases, only to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man.

Public General Acts, 1891-1910.

United State. Total. Kingdom. 1891-1900 295 336 631 1901-1910 252 206 458 Total 547 542 1,089

It will be noticed that there is a curious approximation between the numbers in the two columns, and nearly half the legislative output of Parliament thus takes a form which is at any rate contrary to the spirit of the Act of Union. Excluding financial measures during the few years when the exchequers of Great Britain and Ireland continued to be separate, it would have been anticipated that the legislation under the Union would be uniform, or at least tend to uniformity, and it is very significant that, after more than a hundred years, so much separate legislation should still be required for the several portions of the United Kingdom. But I will postpone any further comments on this situation until I have shown how the “State” Acts are divided up as between the three countries and what are the principal subjects with which they deal.

From my classification of the “State” Acts according to countries, I have omitted the twenty-one Acts which apply solely to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, one Scottish and Irish Act, and one Welsh Act; and, as to Wales, I may take the opportunity to say that I do not prejudge its claim to separate treatment in any measure of Home Rule all round, but that I shall not specifically mention Wales in this paper, partly in order to avoid the repeated enumeration of the four countries in the place of England, Scotland and Ireland, partly because the claim of the Principality, so far as it may be based on laws and administration that are distinct from those of England, is exceedingly weak. Education, however, is already separately administered, separate Insurance Commissioners have been appointed for Wales, and an important Welsh Intermediate Education Act was passed in 1889, just before the period that is covered by the following table.

“State” ACTS, 1891-1910.

England. Scotland. Ireland. Great England Total. Britain. and Ireland. 1891-1900 140 74 72 17 21 324 1901-1910 78 37 57 14 9 195 Total 218 111 129 31 30 519

The above table shows, so far as mere numbers are concerned, how far the pressure upon the Parliament of the United Kingdom would be removed if it were relieved of the responsibility for English, Scottish and Irish legislation, respectively; and, in view of the relative population of the three countries, we cannot be surprised at the conclusion to be drawn from the figures that the main cause of the legislative congestion lies in the fact that the laws relating exclusively to England and those applying to the United Kingdom as a whole, have to be passed by one and the same Parliament. We should, then, seek for some form of delegation which would remove English and Scottish, as well as Irish legislation, from the purview of the existing Parliament; but, in the meanwhile, the figures show that the removal of the Irish business would relieve matters appreciably, and it is probable, without counting the Home Rule Bills, which should not be regarded as exclusively Irish measures, that the Irish legislative proposals take more of the time of the House of Commons than would be represented by the proportion which they bear to the total legislative output.

I now pass to the subject-matter of the Acts of Parliament; and I again turn to Mr. Spalding’s book. He has made a most interesting analysis of the statutes up to the year 1890, from which it appears that Parliament had been unable to legislate by Acts applying over the whole of the United Kingdom whenever it had had to deal with the administration of justice and the laws relating to any of the following subjects: the tenure and occupation of land; the holding, transfer, and devolution of property (including land); the Church; the poor; local government, rural and urban; roads, railways, and canals; and education.(160) These are the subjects, that is to say, on which Parliament had been obliged to pass separate laws for the different parts of the United Kingdom, and the study of this centrifugal tendency seemed to me so important that I have continued (on the next page) the analysis for the following twenty years.

The first impression derived from this table is that the division between the subjects on which the legislation covers the whole of the United Kingdom, and those on which it has a narrower application, is much the same as during the earlier period. Parliament continues to legislate separately for the “States” in the matters in which it has been its practice so to do, and this in itself is a very significant consideration in view of the strong contrary inducement resulting from the growing congestion of Parliamentary business. Thus, taking the last three headings on the list, we see that in regard to Education, the Poor, and the Church, all the legislation during the twenty years was of a “State” character, while the very numerous Acts relating to Local Administration were in almost every instance equally limited in their application. When we pass to Law and Justice, and to Land and Agriculture, we find that the “State” predominance is not quite so marked, but even so, there were three times as many “State” as “United Kingdom” laws, and we conclude that, though the pressure of Parliamentary business is against it, “State” legislation continues to hold the field over a wide and varied range of legislative activity.

Public General Acts.—United Kingdom.(161)

Date. 1891-5 1896-1900 1901-5 1906-10 Total Imperial. 24 12 13 15 64 Army and 15 25 18 14 72 Navy. Conditions 10 9 5 10 34 of Employment. Benefit. 6 5 2 5 18 Finance. 37 30 29 28 124 General 40 21 20 31 112 Administration. Trade and 6 12 9 18 45 Commerce. Traffic. 4 1 3 8 Law and 16 4 5 14 39 Justice. Land and 7 4 1 8 20 Agriculture Local 3 4 1 3 11 Administration Education Poor Law Church Total 168 127 106 146 547

States (England, Scotland And Ireland, Separately, And Combinations Of Any Two Of Them).

Date. 1891-5 1896-1900 1901-5 1906-10 Total Imperial. Army and Navy. Conditions of Employment. Benefit. Finance. 3 10 4 17 General 7 10 8 7 32 Administration. Trade and 9 6 9 12 36 Commerce. Traffic. 4 4 8 Law and 40 43 9 31 123 Justice. Land and 23 11 7 22 63 Agriculture. Local 49 55 23 34 161 Administration. Education. 9 10 11 10 40 Poor Law. 4 15 4 2 25 Church. 3 10 2 1 16 Total. 151 174 77 119 521

At the other end of the scale are the subjects on which Parliament is always able to legislate for the whole of the United Kingdom by a single Statute. The Imperial Laws are those which are promoted by the Foreign, Colonial, and India Offices, and concern our relations with Foreign Powers or with some portion of the British Empire. The Army and Navy laws include not only the Naval and Military Works Acts, but any Acts dealing with the Territorial and Reserve Forces. The next two classes may be bracketed together as Labour Laws, but are distinct according as they relate to the conditions of employment of the workers, for instance, in shops, coal mines, or factories, or to the benefits which accrue to them through Workmen’s Compensation, Friendly and other Societies, and Old-Age Pensions. In both these cases, also, all the laws apply to the whole of the United Kingdom as do the great majority of the laws in the next two headings of Finance and General Administration. The “State” Acts under Finance are those by which Parliament has made grants towards the local expenditure upon education and towards the relief of the land from local burdens, and has done so separately for the three countries; and the “State” Acts of General Administration deal with the Central Departments which are maintained separately for England, Scotland, and Ireland. The heading of traffic is of dwindling importance, and the enumeration ends with trade and commerce where the “United Kingdom” laws have a slight numerical superiority.

I have confined myself here to a few summary remarks upon the different legislative headings as I have discussed the matter in greater detail elsewhere;(162) nor do I wish to enlarge upon the conclusions that might be drawn from the figures. The South African War is evidently responsible for the greater number of Military Acts in 1896-1900; and the slowing down of the Parliamentary machine during Mr. Balfour’s Administration is reflected in the smallness of the total legislative output in 1901-5. Moreover, since the Unionists were in power throughout 1901-5, and the Liberals throughout 1906-10, there is scope for a direct comparison of the records of the two Governments, but such considerations have no bearing upon our present purpose.

On the contrary, I hope that the opponents as well as the supporters of Home Rule would agree that, since Home Rule involves a division of legislative powers between the Parliament of the United Kingdom and the Irish Parliament, it is not only pertinent, but necessary, that we should make ourselves acquainted with the lines upon which Parliament has, in practice, divided up its legislative business. For, while the point should not be pressed too far, I would suggest that the separate Irish laws, and, for that matter, the separate English and Scottish laws, constitute a kind of internal devolution, which is all the more significant because Parliament has not been actuated by any preconceived purpose; and that the subjects which are now dealt with by “State” laws are, for that very reason, those of which Parliament should naturally be relieved under any scheme of Home Rule. Similarly, it might be claimed that Parliament should retain those powers which it is now able to exercise in common for the whole of the United Kingdom; but the position is not the same in the two cases. In its anxiety to economise time, Parliament does not hesitate to render its measures applicable to the whole of the United Kingdom by appending to them clauses which regulate separately the application of the provisions to Scotland and Ireland; and where these “application clauses,” as they are called, are long and complicated, it is probable that separate measures for the different parts of the United Kingdom could be adjusted more closely to the local requirements. On the other hand, we may be sure that Parliament would not have passed, for instance, separate Local Government Acts for England, Scotland and Ireland, each of which took up much of its time, unless it had been obliged to do so; and we may assume, whenever such separate Acts are passed, that Parliament had some strong reason for its action, though, of course, I do not imply that Parliament has legislated also for England and Scotland on every subject on which it has passed an Act that related exclusively to Ireland.

But it may be said that, while I have sufficiently described these separate laws, I have not explained why they are passed, nor have I given any reason why they must be continued. The separate laws are passed because England, Scotland and Ireland have in many respects distinct and different institutions. In Ireland, for instance, neither the position of the Church, nor the organisation of the police or of the Courts of Justice, nor the law in regard to the tenure of land, nor the system of education or of local government in general, is the same as in England or in Scotland; while Ireland is also subject to an exceptional code of criminal law. And the institutions of England and Scotland differ also very widely from one another. “After a long period of intimate union between England and Scotland,” said Lord Lothian, in 1887, in a speech in the House of Lords upon the proposed enlargement of the powers of the Secretary for Scotland, “people are apt to forget how entirely distinctive and different the administration of Scotland is from that of England. There is almost no point of resemblance. There are different forms of religion and different social forms affecting almost every portion of Scotland. There is a different code of education—an entirely different code of education—and different systems of agriculture. There are also different systems affecting the law of lunacy and parochial laws, and almost every other department.”(163) And these differences between the three countries, which are the direct cause of the distinctive laws, must surely be regarded as permanent, seeing that they have persisted since the respective Acts of Union. Neither Scotland nor Ireland would willingly surrender its separate judicial and ecclesiastical institutions or its separate machinery of administration. Indeed, the prevailing tendency favours increased differentiation, and it has the support of Unionists as well as of Liberals. The Unionists have recently created new Irish Departments in Dublin, such as the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, and when the Liberals had re-established the office of Secretary for Scotland after a lapse of nearly a century and a half, the Unionists proceeded to add considerably to its powers.

We may thus take it as axiomatic that, in the absence of Imperial Federation, or of a proposal such as Home Rule whereby Parliament can be relieved of some of its legislative duties, it must continue to occupy itself with five different categories of laws: Imperial laws, affecting the British Dominions beyond the seas; laws applying to the whole of the United Kingdom; and laws which relate exclusively to England, to Scotland and to Ireland. Moreover, while each legislative sphere has its parallel sphere of administration, the sole and supreme authority, except so far as the Dominions look after their own affairs, is centred, as with the legislative power, in a single body, the Government of the United Kingdom, which holds an absolutely unique position in the extent and variety of its responsibilities. In both these functions, then, we may have serious doubts as to how the system works, but I am unable to give any direct evidence in regard to the Executive. Though it is inherently improbable that a small group of men should be able adequately to supervise so varied a collection of interests, the subject is obviously one in which it is almost impossible to obtain precise information. The Cabinet of 1880-5 was not altogether happy in its multiplex activities, and complaints were rife of the neglect of home affairs during the South African War. Speaking generally, indeed, the Unionists, according to their adversaries, subordinate domestic to Imperial interests, while the critics of the Liberals would say that the Liberals reverse the process. And there we may leave the question, while agreeing, I hope, that Home Rule, or preferably Home Rule all round, would be beneficial so far as it would relieve the pressure upon a Cabinet that can scarcely fail to be overworked. And if there is any doubt as to the Cabinet there can be no doubt that Parliament is overworked to a very grievous extent. Irrespective of the strain upon individual numbers, it is admittedly unequal to the efficient discharge of its manifold functions. It cannot do all that it should do, and much of what it does do, it does without proper discussion. As to the first of these shortcomings, I am glad to be able to quote from an article in the _Round Table_(164) for December, 1911, in which, after a detailed comparison of the time that is available to the House of Commons with the demands that are made upon it, the conclusion is reached that “the legislative requirements of the country are too great for the available Parliamentary time.” And, as to the absence of proper discussion, the reader may be referred to the remarks on every occasion when the use of the guillotine closure is proposed, while the final inadequacy of the House of Commons is implicit in the recent admission of the Prime Minister, when proposing the guillotine motion upon the National Insurance Bill, that, without a resort to this method of procedure, the House cannot carry out the duties which it is required by the country and the interests of the Empire to discharge. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that, in trying to get all this diverse work out of a single Parliament, Governments have not only grievously restricted its legislative powers, but have also reduced the opportunities for discussion on administration and finance which are at least equally important functions of any supreme Parliamentary authority.

But the agitation in connection with the National Insurance Act will keep public attention sufficiently focussed upon the manner in which Parliament does its legislative work, and I pass from the amount of the work to the consequences arising from its variety. As the Cabinet must supervise both domestic and Imperial affairs, and Parliament must deal separately with these two branches of legislation, so the electorate should not overlook either the Imperial or domestic views of those who seek its suffrages. But an elector may be faced by the difficulty that he likes the Imperial views of one candidate and the domestic views of the other, while the same man must represent him in both of these aspects in the House of Commons. In 1900 the Liberal supporter of the South African War was confronted with this dilemma in an acute form; and, in view of subsequent disputations, it may be taken to have been unfortunate that the party which won the elections of 1900, almost entirely on Imperial considerations, should thereby have been placed also in charge of our domestic concerns. And there was a similar confusion of issues in 1906, when, because a man was a tariff reformer or a free-trader, it did not necessarily follow that, in the former event, he was for, or, in the latter, against, the Conservative policy in regard to the liquor trade or religious instruction in the elementary schools. No small advantage, therefore, would accrue from Home Rule all round in the fact that separate categories of issues would be placed separately before the constituencies.

And the electoral confusion is reproduced in the House of Commons; for there can be no doubt that the Liberals suffered under this disability in the Parliament of 1900, and the Conservatives in that of 1906. But, in the case of the Member, the connection with so many diverse interests has also other objectionable consequences. Supposing he sits for an English constituency, his responsibility extends to Scottish and Irish laws and administration, as to which he will know little or nothing, while his constituents will usually be indifferent as to what he may do. Illustrating this matter from my own experience as an English county Member, I may say, regarding my votes upon the Scottish Small Landholders and Valuation Bills, and the Irish Evicted Tenants and Land Bills, that not one of these subjects brought me any letter from a constituent, or was the occasion of any reference whatever in the course of any of my political meetings. And, since there is no reason to suppose that other English constituencies would feel or act differently, all these votes of English Members are in reality irresponsible, and they are to be condemned upon the principles of representative Government. For, in spite of the observance of its outward forms, its true spirit is absent wherever there is a failure of the healthy interplay of influences between a Member and his constituents; and here again, Home Rule all round could alone relieve the situation. Through the establishment of separate Parliaments in England, Scotland and Ireland, a Member’s work in each of these bodies would be confined, as regards public affairs, to matters by which his constituents were or might be affected and in which there was the normal and proper relation between the electors and those whom they had elected.

Moreover, there is a further evil effect arising from the inevitable indifference of constituents to much of the legislation which does not apply to the country in which they live. In view of the divergence of interests and diversity of classes represented in every Parliament, there is probably no legislature in which there is not a tendency to “log-rolling,” by which I mean arrangements among Members to support measures about which they do not care in return for help with measures in which they are particularly concerned. This temptation will be greater when the Parliament is not only overworked, as is the case here, but the struggle is intensified by the rivalry between English, Scottish, and Irish claims upon its attention. In the resultant situation, indeed, arrangements of a “log-rolling” character are likely to be made even upon the wider issues, and the fact should not be overlooked that they are rendered more easy because so many laws are passed separately for England, Scotland, and Ireland. In theory, of course, as Professor Dicey claims, it is the duty of a Member, whencesoever returned, to consult for the interests of the whole nation, and not to safeguard the interests of particular localities or countries; but in practice he cannot do it. The subjects for legislation are so complicated that he cannot make himself acquainted with them as they affect each of the three countries, and the pressure upon Parliament is so tremendous that he is almost bound to try to get for his own country a fair share of such time as is available. It is, therefore, wiser to bow to the inevitable, and enable the English, Scottish, or Irish Member, as the case may be, to look after his own concerns in his own Parliament, untroubled by the presence of others who do not understand his business and will not be called to account by their constituents for what they may do, while leaving the control of all common affairs, as at present, to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

There are, however, valid reasons why Ireland has a pre-eminent claim to priority of treatment. Ireland has been much less successful than England or Scotland in securing that Parliamentary action should be in accordance with the wishes of the majority of its Members in the House of Commons. Where the representatives of three countries together constitute a legislative body, it is probable that each of these countries will at some time or other be under the sway of a majority different from that which would be formed if its own representatives alone decided upon its composition; but it is clear that this fate is less likely to overtake the country which has a great numerical preponderance in the legislature in question. Thus, taking the period since 1885, England, holding 465 of the 670 seats in the House of Commons, was only in this position from 1892-5, for at the two elections in 1910 there was almost a tie in the return of 226 Ministerialists and 239 supporters of the Opposition. And this great preponderance of one of the countries adds to the likelihood that the others may have the majority of their own representatives in a minority of the whole representation. I have not been discussing the separate case of Wales, and so I will only say that, of the 30 Welsh Members, on no occasion in the twenty-seven years have the Unionists been able to muster more than 8; and Scotland has scarcely responded more closely to the swing of the pendulum in England. Though the Unionists were in power for fifteen out of the twenty-seven years, they had a majority in Scotland, and that a very small one, only in the Parliament of 1900. But Scotland on the whole does not come off badly, since it is not the practice of the Members from the other countries to vote down the Scottish representatives. Where Scotland does suffer is in their inability, owing to their numerical weakness, to secure a fair share of attention for Scottish domestic concerns. A law on Scottish Education, for instance, though it got into the Queen’s Speech for 1900, was not enacted until 1908, and the Scottish Members never have more than one day in the Session for the discussion of all the Scottish Estimates. When we pass to Ireland, it is difficult to make any similar comparison, for, though the Nationalists sit permanently in opposition in the House of Commons, it does not follow that they should be classed as being opposed to the Liberals as well as to the Unionists. If we regard them as opposed to both of the principal parties, then, when the Liberals have been in power, every Irish Member with one single exception must be reckoned to have been among their opponents. But, if we prefer to base our calculations upon the sort of informal understanding which has existed during most of the time between the Liberals and the Nationalists, we must confine our attention, from the present point of view, to the years of Unionist Government, and we find that, of the 103 Irish representatives, the number of Irish Unionists during those periods has never exceeded 23 and has been as low as 19. Thus, putting the various figures which have been quoted into percentages, it becomes evident that England has had to live under a Liberal Government when the Unionists (in 1892-5) had 58 per cent. of the total English representation; Scotland has had to live under a Unionist Government when the Liberals (in 1886-92) had 60 per cent. of the total Scottish representation; whereas Ireland has had to live under a Unionist Government when the Nationalists had as much as 81 per cent. of the total Irish representation. And it must be borne in mind that, while England and Scotland are only rarely governed in opposition to the wishes of the majority of their representatives, Ireland has continued to be preponderantly Nationalist irrespective of party fluctuations in Great Britain.

In these circumstances, Ireland, whether in its Nationalist or its Unionist constituencies, never expresses any other opinion than for or against Home Rule. We regret the confusion at all elections in the United Kingdom between Imperial and domestic issues, but at least we get an idea of the views of the electorate in Great Britain on some big Imperial question, or as between Free Trade and Protection. In Ireland we get nothing of the kind; it is impossible to say, for instance, whether Ireland is in favour of Tariff Reform or not; and the votes of the great majority of its representatives in the House of Commons are usually given, not with reference to the views of their constituents on the question under discussion, but solely in relation to the attainment of Home Rule. Now, this attitude of the Nationalists is evidently adopted because Irish domestic concerns are decided in the House of Commons by men who are not Irish representatives; and it may be remarked that Scotsmen, and even, to some extent, Englishmen, are also liable to have their wishes on purely domestic affairs over-ridden by the representatives of the other countries, but that they do not, on that account, subordinate everything else to the effort to release themselves from this anomaly.

But, apart from the consideration, as we have seen above, that the Irish have been the principal sufferers, the Irish electorate are entitled, if this is a free country, to choose the issue which shall be put forward, and we should sympathise with them when they ask to be allowed to manage their domestic affairs without interference, in accordance with the principles of representative government. It is immaterial how far the Irish Nationalists have actually been able to get their own way in the House of Commons, for their efforts have usually been in vain until after a lawless agitation in Ireland, which, as a means of securing redress for grievances, is as demoralising to the legislator as to the elector. And when the law for which the Irish have asked has been passed without any such outside pressure, it is evident that the votes of the majority of the Irish representatives would have been useless unless sufficient English and Scottish Members had been willing to fall in with their wishes. Every Irish Nationalist knows, therefore, that a majority of the Irish representatives is by itself utterly unable to carry a purely Irish measure through the House of Commons, however often it may have been advocated, and however large may have been the Irish majorities in its favour; and representative government cannot fail to be brought into disrepute in Ireland, on account of its futility under existing conditions. Moreover, if representative institutions are to work well, there should be, so far as is possible, in every constituency supporters and opponents of the Government on the current questions of the day, for it is only by constant discussion and interaction that we can secure a sound relation between Parliament and the country. But nothing of the kind takes place in Ireland. Through their dissociation from the division into parties that prevails in Great Britain, the bulk of the Irish people are not informed as to the views on topics other than Home Rule of the Liberals, Unionists, or Labour men. In the greater part of Ireland, the Nationalist candidate is returned unopposed or is opposed only by another Nationalist; and when this is so, the party in power, whether it be Unionist or Liberal, is usually without any machinery by which its case is put before the electorate. Elsewhere, in Ireland, the Unionists have their organisation against Home Rule, and so far the Liberals are even in a worse position, for, though they have had the supreme control of affairs for the last six years, there are not half a dozen constituencies in Ireland where they have any means by which they can learn the views of the people or explain the policy of the Government. And yet Ireland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, is supposed to live under representative institutions! No doubt I may be reminded that the Nationalist Members are in touch with local opinion in Ireland, and that they are the informal allies of the Liberals; but the Nationalist attitude is concerned with little else but Home Rule, and it is just because, in existing circumstances, the Irish do not declare themselves, or perhaps even form an opinion, on ordinary political issues, that our representative system has broken down so much more severely in Ireland than in England or in Scotland.

And thus I conclude my survey of the practical working of the Act of Union. I have shown that the domestic affairs of the three countries are, in continuance of what was done before the Union of the Parliaments, or as the result of subsequent developments, ordered in many respects separately for England, Scotland, and Ireland, and that there is no question in any quarter of the elimination of these separate arrangements. But they have led, as has been further demonstrated, to many difficulties in connection with our system of Parliamentary government, and it is only by the sub-division of the responsibilities between two or more Parliaments that such difficulties can satisfactorily be overcome. We have, therefore, valid grounds for the advocacy of Home Rule, apart from the particular claims of Ireland, though they, of course, serve to strengthen the argument; and, in considering what form the proposals should take, we cannot do better than study carefully how far England, Scotland, and Ireland are now governed in common and how far each of the three countries is governed separately. For the subjects in which there is now separate treatment are those which would be transferred under Home Rule with the smallest breach of continuity, or rather, in the natural course of our constitutional evolution.

(III) Colonial Forms Of Home Rule. BY SIR ALFRED MOND, BART., M.P.

One of the most important elements in the problem of Home Rule must be the relation between the spheres of legislation to be retained by the existing Parliament, and those to be allocated to the subordinate Irish Legislature. Such demarcation will be applied later to the other local Parliaments which may be created for England, Scotland and Wales. The creation of subordinate legislatures, together with the retention of a central Parliament, must necessarily lead to the study of federal systems already in existence in the Empire, and of the mutual relations of similar bodies within such federations. It is true that a certain influential school of political thought is rather disposed to compare the position of the future Irish Parliament to that of the Dominion Parliaments in their relations with the Parliament at Westminster. The effort, however, to draw an analogy between Ireland in her relations with Great Britain, and the relations existing between the three Dominions and the United Kingdom is most misleading. The difference between those dominions and Ireland is indeed far more striking than the similarity, whether they are compared either from the point of view of area, of present and future population, or of geographical position. The narrowness of the strip of sea that separates Ireland from Great Britain places it from a military and naval standpoint in a very different position to that of Canada, Australia, or South Africa. Whereas the great distance at which these Dominions are situated imposes upon them the necessity of creating their own defensive forces, a separate Irish Navy or Army would have no _raison d’etre_. Again, not only the distance but the different environment and climate of these Dominions, and, particularly in the cases of Canada and South Africa, their greater non-British population, naturally promote the development of a sense of national entity and therefore of a desire for a greater measure of national independence than is felt or demanded by Ireland, in spite of her strong national sentiment. Supposing for argument’s sake, that the whole of the Canadian, Australian, and South African Dominions formed geographically with Great Britain one continuous territory such as the United States of America, it is clear that there would have been no call for granting the various Dominions the almost sovereign powers which they now enjoy. What would most probably arise in such a hypothetical case would be a single federal complex, comprising a central authority or parliament and a large number of state legislatures.

As a matter of fact the form of government of these various Dominions and their relations to the Mother Country are largely a geographical accident. It is impossible to conceive a system of “Home Rule all round” in which England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland would have the same positions and powers as Canada, Australia and South Africa, and would maintain the same relations towards each other as all three Dominions now occupy towards the United Kingdom. Nor could such an idea be entertained by any one framing a constitution, intended to be the commencement of the federalisation, first of the United Kingdom and afterwards in due time of the British Empire, when circumstances and the growth of public opinion render it possible to secure the representation of the Dominions in an expanded Imperial Parliament.

In a truly federal system such as those of Canada and Australia, the citizens who elect representatives direct to the Federal Parliament to deal with the broader issues and interests of the Commonwealth, are naturally fully represented. If the Irish Legislature is to be precluded from dealing with Imperial matters, it is obviously only just that the Irish people, as citizens of the Empire, should send a proportionate number of representatives to the Imperial Parliament to express their views on Imperial subjects, and, under a perfect federal system, the expression of their views would be confined to Imperial subjects. This would consequently necessitate the continued presence of a certain number of Irish members at Westminster. In view of the fact that the “in and out” system, which caused so much criticism of Mr. Gladstone’s Bill, has been in force for over forty years in the Hungarian Parliament at Budapest, in which the Croatian representatives are only entitled to vote on matters affecting the whole Kingdom, while precluded from voting on those affecting Hungary alone, it is evident that the practical inconvenience cannot be anything like so great as has been imagined. But whatever inconvenience might result to the Government from the presence of Irish representatives in such circumstances, it certainly cannot be allowed to outweigh the injustice of leaving such a large section of the British electorate, as is the Irish people, unrepresented in a chamber which deals with matters that may very seriously affect their interests. Mr. Asquith’s hint at the possibility of such a change in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons as will distribute legislative business between English and Scotch Standing Committees, suggests a method of combining the retention of the Irish members at Westminster, with their exclusion from participation in other than Imperial matters.

Of course in framing a new constitution to meet at once the legitimate national aspirations of the Irish people and the requirements of the Imperial power, we cannot pedantically follow any existing model or precedent, or drive any analogy too far. It is not intended, by drawing attention to the fact that the local rather than the Dominion Legislatures constitute the better models, in any way to impair the prestige of the future Irish Parliament, or to lessen the readiness to meet all reasonable demands of the Irish party and people, or to withhold powers necessary to make self-government a success. But it is essential to bear in mind that the primary condition of permanent success is a measure that will work with the least possible friction on both sides while satisfying legitimate Irish demands.

With these points in view, it is therefore proposed to examine shortly the constitutions of the three dominions already referred to, with the object of showing what are the powers reserved by them for the Federal Governments and what are those attributed to the different States comprised in the federations, in order to deduce from them some parallel applicable to the case of Ireland—of course, as already indicated, with such modifications as may be rendered necessary by special circumstances.

It will be well to begin with the Canadian Constitution as the oldest, dealing afterwards with the Constitutions of the Australian Commonwealth (1900) and of the South African Union (1909).

The British North America Act, 1867, expressly sets forth the classes of subjects which can be dealt with by the Federal Parliament “for greater certainty, but not so as to restrict the generality of the foregoing terms of this section,” that is to say, the liberty given to the Central Parliament “to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Canada, in relation to all matters not coming within the classes of subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the legislatures of the provinces.” Thus, in Canada, the “residuary” or unspecified classes of subjects are reserved for the Central or Federal Parliament.

Section 92 provides that in each province the legislature may exclusively make laws on the following subjects:

The amendment of the Constitution of the Province, except as regards the office of Lieutenant-Governor;

Direct taxation within the province for provincial purposes;

The borrowing of money on the sole credit of the province;

The establishment and tenure of provincial offices, and the appointment and payment of provincial officers;

The management and sale of the public lands;

The establishment, maintenance and management of prisons, hospitals, asylums, charities, in and for the province;

Municipal institutions in the province;

Shop, saloon, tavern, auctioneer, and other licences, for provincial, local or municipal purposes.

Local works and undertakings, excepting:—

“(_a_) Lines of steam or other ships, railways, canals, telegraphs, and other works and undertakings connecting the province with any other or others of the provinces, or extending beyond the limits of the province.

“(_b_) Lines of steam ships between the province and any British or foreign country.

“(_c_) Such works as, although wholly situate within the province, are before or after their execution declared by the Parliament of Canada to be for the general advantage of Canada or for the advantage of two or more of the provinces.”

The incorporation of companies with provincial objects; marriage and property and civil rights in the province;

The administration of justice in the province, civil and criminal jurisdiction, together with the imposition of punishment by fine, penalty, or imprisonment, and generally all matters of a merely local or private nature.

Subsequent paragraphs provide that the provincial legislatures may exclusively make laws in relation to education, provide for uniformity of laws in certain provinces, and also deal with agriculture and immigration, with the proviso, however, that such laws shall have effect only so long and as far as they are not repugnant to any Act of the Canadian Parliament.

In the case of the Australian Commonwealth, it is the powers of the Central Parliament that are strictly defined and restricted, contrary to the course followed in the Canadian Constitution. As an indication of the powers left to the State Parliaments it may be well to specify the powers of the Central Parliament as set forth in the Constitution Act, Paragraphs 51 and 52:

Trade and commerce with other countries, and among the States; taxation; bounties; borrowing money; postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services; naval and military defence; lighthouses, &c.; astronomical and meteorological observations; quarantine, fisheries, census and statistics; currency, coinage and legal tender; banking, other than State banking; insurance; weights and measures; bills of exchange and promissory notes; bankruptcy and insolvency; copyright, patents and trade marks; naturalisation and aliens; foreign corporations, and trading or financial corporations within the Commonwealth; marriage and divorce; invalid and old-age pensions; the service and execution throughout the Commonwealth of the civil and criminal process, and the judgments of the courts of the States; the recognition throughout the Commonwealth of the laws and judicial proceedings of the States; immigration and emigration; the influx of criminals; external affairs; control of railways for naval and military transport; the acquisition, with the consent of a State, of railways of the State; railway construction and extension; conciliation and arbitration in industrial disputes extending beyond the limits of any State; etc.

Paragraph 107 provides that every power of the Parliament of a Colony shall, unless exclusively vested in the Parliament of the Commonwealth, or withdrawn from the Parliament of the State, continue as before. Paragraph 109 stipulates, however, that when a State law is inconsistent with the law of the Commonwealth, the latter shall prevail, and the former shall, to the extent of the inconsistency, be invalid.

Certain powers specifically granted to the State Parliaments are set forth in the following paragraphs, which are of sufficient interest to be cited textually:

“112. After uniform duties of customs have been imposed, a State may levy on imports or exports, or on goods passing into or out of the State, such charges as may be necessary for executing the inspection laws of the State; but the net produce of all charges so levied shall be for the use of the Commonwealth; and any such inspection laws may be annulled by the Parliament of the Commonwealth.

“113. All fermented, distilled, or other intoxicating liquids passing into any State or remaining therein for use, consumption, sale, or storage, shall be subject to the laws of the State as if such liquids had been produced in the State.

“114. A State shall not, without the consent of the Parliament of the Commonwealth, raise or maintain any naval or military force, or impose any tax on property of any kind belonging to the Commonwealth, nor shall the Commonwealth impose any tax on property of any kind belonging to a State.

“115. A State shall not coin money, nor make anything but gold and silver coin a legal tender in payment of debts.

“117. A subject of the Queen, resident in any State, shall not be subject in any other State to any disability or discrimination which would not be equally applicable to him if he were a subject of the Queen resident in such other State.

“118. Full faith and credit shall be given, throughout the Commonwealth to the laws, the Public Acts and records, and the judicial proceedings of every State.

“120. Every State shall make provision for the detention in its prisons of persons accused or convicted of offences against the laws of the Commonwealth, and for the punishment of persons convicted of such offences, and the Parliament of the Commonwealth may make laws to give effect to this provision.”

In South Africa where, owing to local circumstances, a purely federal system was held to be inappropriate, the powers granted to the subordinate provincial legislatures are much more restricted than in Australia and Canada. In the “South Africa Act, 1909,” Paragraph 59 simply provides that the (Central) “Parliament shall have full power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the union,” a formula similar to those used in the Canadian and Australian Constitutions as also in the Gladstonian Home Rule Bills. On the other hand, several paragraphs in Section 5 dealing with the provinces almost recall the centralising tendencies of France, such as for instance, the provision that the Governor-General in Council is to appoint the administrator, or Chief Executive Officer, of the province, in whose name all executive acts relating to provincial affairs shall be done—an official who presents a certain resemblance to the French Prefect.

The powers reserved to the Executive Committee of the Provincial Council, presided over by the Administrator, comprise:

Taxation within the province;

The borrowing of money on its sole credit;

Education, other than higher education;

Agriculture;

Hospitals, charitable, municipal and other local institutions;

Local works and undertakings within the province, other than railways and harbours and bridges connecting two provinces;

The imposition of fines, penalties, or imprisonment for enforcing provincial laws and generally all matters which, in the opinion of the Governor-General in Council, are of a merely local or private nature in the province.

Taking the Canadian Constitution as the most workable model, let us consider in the light of that instrument what powers it would be reasonable to hand over to an Irish Legislature. There are two ways of proceeding in framing any such Constitution. One is to grant general powers with specific limitations, the course followed by Mr. Gladstone in his two Home Rule Bills. The second is to specify the powers to be given to the subordinate Legislature, outside of which it cannot act. Good reasons may be advanced for both methods; but in view of the difficulty of accurately foreseeing all the needs and necessities to be provided for by a new legislative body and the great risk of overlooking important matters, the inclusion of which later on might encounter very serious obstacles, the method of giving general powers with exceptions and restrictions specified in the Act seems the more workmanlike of the two.

If the latter course be adopted, following the precedent created in the Bills of 1886 and 1893, the new Legislature will acquire general powers to make the necessary laws for the peace, order and good government of Ireland. The powers thus granted in general terms will of course be very extensive, comprising, as they must, the liberty of raising taxes, borrowing money, and dealing with education, public worship, property and civil rights, land, factory and company laws, the administration of justice, licensing, etc., etc.

In connection with taxation the important question arises whether the power should be granted to any unit of a federal state to impose Customs Duties. In the models we have referred to no local legislature is entitled to deal with Customs or Tariffs. Indeed all three Constitutions expressly provide that there shall be free trade within the limits of the federation. It is inconceivable that a British Parliament should ever grant, or that the Irish representatives should ever ask for, powers which would enable Ireland to set up a radically different fiscal system to that adopted by the rest of the United Kingdom. Thus the precedents established by the Constitutions of the different Dominions would undoubtedly have to be followed. There is a further question to consider, namely, how and to what extent it will be possible to reconcile any conflict that may arise between the powers exercised by the central and local legislatures in collecting taxes. For instance is the income tax to be retained as a purely Imperial tax, or is the Irish Parliament to have power to levy, either in substitution for it or in addition to it, an income tax of its own? The same question arises with regard to excise duties. As no income tax is imposed in any of the three self-governing Dominions referred to, their constitutions throw no light on this point. Nor does the Constitution of the German Empire, as there the income tax is a state and not an Imperial tax. A solution of this problem might be possible on two lines. One by allowing the Irish Government to impose its own income tax, paying a fixed contingent to the British Treasury. The second method would be to allow the Irish Parliament to make additions to the British tax, in the way that German municipalities are allowed to make additions to the State income tax. Something of this kind seems contemplated under the Government Bill.

In the Dominions licenses for the sale of alcoholic liquors, excise duties, and land taxes are all imposed by the States. They might also be very well made State, that is to say Irish, taxes in Ireland. The future financial relations between Ireland and Great Britain, however, are dealt with in another chapter.

In considering what subjects would naturally be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the future Irish Legislature, as of other subsequent British local legislatures, it will be well to see which of these exclusions are common to the Canadian and Australian Constitutions. These are: trade and commerce, indirect taxation, borrowing money, postal, telegraphic, and telephonic services, naval and military defence, lighthouses, etc., quarantine, fisheries, census and statistics, currency, coinage and legal tender, banking, other than State banking, weights and measures, bills of exchange and promissory notes, bankruptcy and insolvency, copyrights patents and trade marks, naturalization and aliens, marriage and divorce. There are also a few differences in the matter of exclusions between the two Dominions. For instance, Canada’s list of reservations for the Central Parliament begins with “The Public Debt and Property,” for which there is no exactly corresponding heading in the Australian Constitution. This Canadian list also includes navigation and shipping, savings banks, the criminal law and penitentiaries. On the other hand the subjects reserved for the Central Parliament in Australia, comprise, _inter alia_, bounties, insurance, other than State insurance, trading or financial corporations, invalid and old-age pensions, immigration and emigration, “external affairs,” control of railways for military and naval transport purposes, railway construction and extension, industrial conciliation and arbitration, etc.

The essential exclusions from the jurisdiction of State Legislatures are, of course, national defence, treaty making powers, laws affecting foreign trade and shipping, lighthouses, coinage and legal tender, trade marks, patents and copyrights to which might very well be added factory legislation, company legislation and the laws affecting negotiable instruments. It would seem a pity to break up the legislation on subjects that are less of local than of general interest, thus adding to their legal difficulties by diversity of legislation. As regards factory laws the question of the position under international conventions of an Irish Legislature demands specially careful consideration. There are, at present, two international conventions relating to factory laws, namely, those concerning the prohibition of white phosphorus in match manufacturing, and night work by women in industrial occupations. It is likely that they will shortly be followed by others regulating the hours of work of women and young persons and prohibiting night work by boys under eighteen. It is desirable that the advantages of such conventions should be retained for the Irish industrial worker.

The justification of most of the exclusions just enumerated is sufficiently obvious and their enforcement in most of the Dominion Constitutions show that by common consent they have been accepted as reasonable, as for instance those dealing with national defence, treaty-making, peace and war, and the rights and privileges of the Crown.

There remains, perhaps the most important point of all, namely the control or power of restriction to be exercised by the Imperial Parliament over the legislation of the new Irish Legislature by means of a veto. The Canadian Constitution confers upon the Dominion Government the same powers of disallowance of Acts of the provincial legislatures as belonged to the Imperial Government prior to 1867. According to Sir John Bourinot (“Parliamentary Procedure”), the Minister of Justice in 1868, laid down certain principles of procedure which have been generally followed up to the present time. On receipt of the Acts passed in any province they are immediately referred to the Minister of Justice who reports upon them. If the Minister considers an Act free from objection and his report is approved by the Governor-General in Council, such approval is forthwith communicated to the Provincial Government. The Minister of Justice makes separate reports on those Acts which he may consider: (1) as being altogether illegal or unconstitutional; (2) as illegal or unconstitutional in part; (3) as, in case of concurrent legislation, clashing with the legislation of the general Parliament; (4) as affecting the interests of the Dominion generally. It has also been the practice (adds Sir John Bourinot) in the case of measures only partially defective, not to disallow the Act in the first instance, but, if the general interest permits such a course, to give the local government an opportunity of considering the objections to such legislation and of remedying the defects thereof. In his book “How Canada is Governed,” Sir John Bourinot makes some pertinent remarks upon the method of dealing with such cases:

“The Governor in Council can within one year from its receipt disallow an Act of a provincial legislature, and consequently prevent it becoming law.... As a rule it is the wiser policy to obtain an opinion from the Courts in all cases of doubt ... rather than use a political power which is regarded with suspicion by the provinces. The law allows such reference to the Supreme Court in Canada.”

In Australia, where the powers of the States were established long before the Commonwealth came into existence, there is no direct power of veto, but in 1903 and subsequently, Acts were passed by the Commonwealth Parliament giving the High Court jurisdiction in matters arising under the Constitution or involving its interpretation. Thus, in the words of Mr. W. Harrison Moore, Dean of the Faculty of Law in the University of Melbourne, in his “Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia,” “the Commonwealth Government and the State Governments are in their relations independent and not hierarchical. There is no such general supervision of the State in the exercise of the powers belonging to it as is enjoyed by the Dominion Government over the Provinces of Canada.... The observance by the Commonwealth Government and the States of the limits set to their powers is secured by the action of the courts whose judicial duties may involve the determination of the validity of the authority under which acts are done, whether that authority is the Crown, a subordinate legislature, or any whatsoever save the Imperial Parliament.”

If the Canadian example be followed the Imperial Parliament will retain powers of control of such a far reaching character over Irish legislation, as ought to dispel the fears of timid souls who are reluctant to entrust the Irish people with the task of working out their own destiny. The Canadian veto has not been a dead letter, but has exercised its restraining influence, both actively and passively, over the Provincial Legislatures, which have naturally been averse to allowing matters to come to a crisis necessitating its use. Further, to follow precedent, the interpretation of the powers to be granted by the new Irish Constitution should rest in the last resort in an appeal to the Privy Council.

With both these safeguards inserted in the Home Rule Bill much of the objection commonly felt against the creation of an Irish Parliament, an objection largely due to loose thinking, should disappear. It may be argued that both in Canada and Australia disputes do occasionally occur between the State Legislatures and the Central Parliaments as to their respective rights. That is one of the inevitable disadvantages of a federal regime, but, as a very distinguished Canadian statesman once said to the writer, the counterbalancing advantages of a de-centralized system far outweigh all such drawbacks. No student of current politics can be blind to the fundamental fact that the amalgamating of the Parliaments of Scotland, Ireland and England into one legislature, without at the same time unifying the legislation of those countries, has produced a state of congestion and overwork which cannot be permanently tolerated. In existing circumstances neither matters affecting the whole Empire nor local legislative needs can secure a sufficient expenditure either of energy or time to do them justice. By partially reversing the process of unification through a devolution of powers to local legislatures we should be following a precedent that has proved successful in other parts of the Empire and in foreign countries while at the same time putting our action into harmony with the true process of evolution.

XVI.—Contemporary Ireland And The Religious Question

(I) A Catholic View. BY MONSIGNOR O’RIORDAN

It is as characteristic of those who have fallen in fortune to talk of their wealth as it is of the consumptive to talk of their health. It is natural. If they were conscious of having the reality they would not feel the need of convincing others that they had it. For a like reason those speak most of virtues and gifts who have them least. One rightly suspects the spirit of those who keep insisting that all are intolerant who think and act on other principles and in other ways than theirs. The word tolerance has met the fate of other words which denote excellent things; it has come to be misused. “Tolerance,” like “religion,” “liberty,” etc., has become a shibboleth, and like these it has been run to death.

When we speak of tolerance we necessarily refer to evil of some sort. In the matter of truth or untruth we are said to tolerate what is untrue, or what we think to be untrue. In the matter of right or wrong, we are said to tolerate what is wrong, or what we think to be wrong. If one says that he is tolerant of that in another which he himself believes to be true or right, he speaks as one who does not understand what he says. It is the same as saying that he is tolerant of his own convictions; in fact, that he tolerates himself. One is said to be tolerant of that in another which he thinks to be erroneous or wrong. Now, every principle which a man holds is a law to him. He may be mistaken; his principles may be false; but whilst he holds them as his principles he cannot under pain of inconsistency disown them in word or deed. No man has proprietary rights in principles. One has no right to compromise them. One may not barter them away, may not make them the basis of a policy of give and take. To do so would be to treat them not as principles but as mere opinions. Principles are things to stand on, not things to play with as with pawns on a chessboard. He who, whilst he professes some principle of belief or conduct in religious or civil life, is ready to agree with his neighbour in the opposite shows little regard for truth and little sense of duty. He who for the sake of some convenience is prepared to play with his principles has practically no principles at all. Such is one who professes universal toleration, although no person would be more pained at being thought an unprincipled man. It is a logical necessity for everyone to be intolerant of principles opposed to his own. In matters of mere _opinion_ one may be, and ought to be, tolerant of the opinions of others, since in face of those opinions he cannot claim an objective certainty for his own. Let us illustrate this. A rationalist who denies the existence of any higher than natural causes cannot admit any event to be miraculous. He may ascribe it to some hypothetical natural cause, or he may have no cause to assign; but he cannot on principle assign a supernatural cause, for the simple reason that he ignores anything above the natural forces which come within the sphere of experience. Thus the rationalist who claims tolerance as his characteristic virtue is intolerant of any doctrine which supposes the supernatural. He must be so, or he lets the ground go from under his feet. Again, the Protestant on his principle of private judgment must be intolerant of any doctrine which supposes an infallible authority on earth claiming a divine commission to teach us the meaning of divinely Revealed Truths. A Catholic who believes in a Church of divine institution, one, visible, infallible, cannot be tolerant of a doctrine which makes different Churches belong by equal right to Christianity, each whilst conflicting with the others claiming Christ for its Founder. For the same reason a Catholic cannot be tolerant of a theory which holds all religions to be equally useful; that is, equally useless. He cannot be tolerant of any theory which involves a denial of Catholic doctrine, since he acknowledges an infallible authority as the source of the Catholic doctrine which he holds. I am now and here neither asserting nor denying any theory or any doctrine, Catholic or non-Catholic. I am only setting forth the inconsistency implied in the toleration of principles opposed to one’s own, whatever those principles be. Is it then irreclaimable prejudice, or indifference to the obligation of principle, that makes some persons throw up their arms and raise a cry of horror when they hear that some Catholic has been excommunicated for having denied or questioned some Article of Catholic faith? What is taken as a matter of course and of common justice in every society and in every club in the country, namely that one who is false to his society and unfaithful to its rules deserves expulsion, is stigmatised as intolerance and moral tyranny in the Catholic Church. There are certain rules in every association which a member may not break under pain of expulsion. But a man may say what he likes, write what he likes, do as he likes; may deny every doctrine, despise every principle, and may nevertheless have, according to some, a right to remain a member of the Catholic Church out of which only Romish intolerance would drive him.

Everyone then, whatever be his religious, philosophical, political, or social principles, must be intolerant of principles which are opposed to his own. Tolerance, however, claims a place in matters of opinion. But must not one think another’s opinions false if they are opposed to his own? Certainly; but, being only opinions, one has no right to claim a monopoly of certainty for one’s own as against those of others. Opinions have no claim to the privilege of principles. And what is true in theory of opinions holds in practice in matters of principle. One cannot, it is true, be tolerant of principles opposed to his own; but others must not suffer at his hands because they own principles which are not his. Everyone must have credit for honesty, since one cannot fathom the depths of another’s conscience. The Catholic Church, not to speak of its individual members, disowns such a pretension as that; _Ecclesia non judicat de internis_ is a maxim in Catholic theology. Thus, Catholic teaching, whilst it binds Catholics to be intolerant of principles and doctrines which it condemns, obliges them also to be tolerant of those who hold those principles and doctrines for the sake of the sincerity which it presumes in those who hold them. If we compare this tolerance, imposed as a duty by Catholic teaching, with the unlimited tolerance professed by some who assert the autonomy of individual reason, we shall find a contrast between, for instance, the noble tolerance of St. Francis de Sales and the bigotry of Voltaire. They were fellow countrymen. Each had great natural gifts, mental acquirements, and uncommon literary power. St. Francis lived a century before Voltaire, and, therefore, nearer to what would now be called those traditions of bigotry from which Voltaire helped so much to set us free. Yet the latter let his pen splutter on all who dared to differ from him; the former in all his controversies dressed his arguments with honey instead of vinegar. That charity which disposes one to see good faith and honesty of purpose in persons in spite of their errors, is the only true source whence the spirit of toleration must flow into civil society. Toleration coming from any other source can give no guarantee of permanence; for it begins with expediency, and ends with it. But the toleration which separates a man’s sincerity from his possible errors, and which in civil life ignores the latter for the sake of the former, is founded on principle, and is above expediency or the changing combination of human affairs.

The sincerity of a man who professes tolerance of principles which he believes to be false is to be suspected; he should be taken as one who is practically indifferent to truth or error. One can rely on the fidelity of him who professes tolerance of others, in spite of some personal views of theirs which he abhors, because of the sincerity with which, as he presumes, they entertain those views. But if they should so obtrude those views into public life as to affect the rights of him who repudiates them, it becomes another matter. That would be an aggression on the civil rights of others; and no person should let himself be made a victim in the name of toleration.

Now, it is a significant fact that Catholic Maryland, before American Independence came, was the one State in America in which no person had to suffer civil disabilities for conscience sake. Members of Protestant sects who had to fly from the intolerance of more powerful Protestant sects in New England States always found toleration and a home there. Bancroft, the Protestant historian of the United States, writes of Maryland:

“Its history is the history of benevolence, gratitude, and toleration. The Catholics who were oppressed by the laws of England were sure to find a peaceful asylum in the quiet harbours of the Chesapeake, and there, too, Protestants were sheltered from Protestant intolerance.”

It is an equally significant fact that later on the non-Catholics of Maryland, in the day of their power, placed grievous disabilities on the children of those Catholics who had given their exiled fathers a refuge in their hour of need.

I will now consider how far those principles which I have set forth have found application in Ireland. I know no country where tolerance and intolerance are more talked of than there. It is sometimes good to talk tolerance, but it is always better to practise it. The word is not heard so much from Irish Catholics. Their relation to it is that they are constantly engaged in defending themselves from charges of intolerance poured out upon them from the vantage ground of ascendency. I doubt whether it is worth while to assure our accusers that those charges are not deserved. Those who call us intolerant in spite of our conduct will discard our assurance in spite of our word. He who is in the habit of calling his neighbour intolerant is not likely to trust him as truthful. There are in every race and class individuals of an intolerant spirit. It has always been so, and will always be so. Those exceptions will remain in spite of the highest principles of a religion, a race, or a class. The spirit of intolerance will be found in individuals within a class, as well as between classes; and in actual life society subdivides itself down to the units. Religion has been for the past few centuries the great cleavage line along which the spirit of intolerance is supposed to play in the distribution of privileges and power in civil life in Ireland. How are we to determine on which side tolerance and intolerance lie? Not certainly by witnesses on either side giving testimony in their own favour. We had better let facts speak then; or, if we accept the evidence of persons, we should hear what they have to say only of those of the other side.

The Synod of Kilkenny met in May, 1642. It was held by the Catholic Bishops of Ireland in connection with the Kilkenny Confederation. That Confederation was National and Catholic; part of its purpose was to support King Charles against those who sought to dethrone him. He did not personally deserve much sympathy from the Irish Catholics; nevertheless, who were the Loyalists then? Ireland was in a state of war, and the rebels were not the Catholics. Now the 18th Decree of the Synod of Kilkenny is as follows:

“Wee ordaine and decree that all and every such as from the beginning of this present warre have invaded the possessions or goods, as well moveable as unmoveable, spirituall or temporal, of any Catholic whether Irish or English, _or also of any Irish Protestant_ being not adversaries of this cause, and doe detaine any such goods, shall be excommunicated, as by this present Decree wee doe excommunicate them, if admonished they do not amend, &c.”

That Decree speaks for itself; it protects Protestants equally with Catholics. The “Lawes and Orders of Warre,” issued by Castlehaven the following year, and the conduct of the Confederates throughout, show the same spirit of toleration which is expressed in the Decree of the Bishops.

Another test of tolerance came with the restored power of Irish Catholics half a century later. How did they use their opportunity? Lecky knew it as well as anyone of his time; he was moreover out of sympathy with the religious and national ideals of the Irish Catholics. Now Lecky, referring to deeds of violence which took place in Ireland, writes (“History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century,” Vol. I., pp. 408, 409):

“Whoever will examine these episodes with impartiality may easily convince himself that their connection with religion has, in most cases, been superficial. Religious cries have been sometimes raised, religious enthusiasm has been often appealed to in the agony of the struggle; but the real causes have been conflicts of races and classes, the struggle of a nationality against annihilation, the invasion of property in land, or the pressure of extreme poverty. Amongst the Catholics, at least, religious intolerance has not been a prevailing vice, and those who have studied closely the history and character of the Irish people can hardly fail to be struck with the deep respect for sincere religion in every form which they have commonly evinced.... In spite of the fearful calamities that followed the Reformation, it is a memorable fact that not a single Protestant suffered for his religion in Ireland during all the period of the Marian persecution in England. The treatment of Bedell during the outbreak of 1641, and the Act establishing liberty of conscience passed by the Irish Parliament of 1689 in the full flush of the brief Catholic ascendency under James II., exhibit very remarkably this aspect of the Irish character.”

Referring to that Catholic Parliament of Ireland, he says (Vol. I., p. 117):

“The members of the House of Commons were almost all new men, completely inexperienced in public business, and animated by the resentment of bitter wrongs. Many of them were sons of some of the 3,000 proprietors who, without trial and without compensation, had been deprived by the Act of Settlement of the estates of their ancestors. To all of them the confiscations of Ulster, the fraud of Strafford, the long train of calamities were recent and vivid events. Old men were still living who might have remembered them all, and there was probably scarcely a man in the Irish Parliament of 1689 who had not been deeply injured by them in his fortunes or his family. It will hardly appear surprising to candid men that a Parliament so constituted, and called together amidst the excitement of a civil war, should have displayed much violence, much disregard for vested interests. Its measures, indeed, were not all criminal. By one Act, which was far in advance of the age, it established perfect religious liberty in Ireland, &c.”

From that time till our own the Catholics of Ireland have had little opportunity of showing whether they were tolerant or otherwise. During the long and dreary meantime the problem before them was not what sort of civil life they should live, but whether or how they could manage to live at all.

So late as 1759, Lord Chancellor Bowes, in giving judgment in a famous trial in Dublin, declared that “The law did not suppose a papist to exist in Ireland.” I have no desire to recall the story of how toleration fared in Ireland down to recent times. It is not necessary, and it is a disagreeable recollection. He would be very bold or very credulous who would think of doubting or denying what that history has been. I take up “Thom’s Almanac” of half a century ago, and I find that so late as that time the public offices were occupied almost exclusively by non-Catholics, from the Lord-Lieutenancy down to the Clerkship of Petty Sessions; and I think that it was so down to the office of the rural process-server. How did it come to pass that Catholics were kept outside, and that non-Catholics got within? Surely not that Catholics willingly yielded all public positions to their neighbours! The arrangement was therefore made by the other side. And what was the reason of that monopoly? Surely not that no Catholic was capable of any civil position except that of paying rates and taxes to the Crown and rent to the landlord. The exclusion was clearly the political penalty which Catholicism had to pay for its principles; the monopoly was the political premium which was awarded to those of the other side.

The Catholics of Ireland have been gradually working their way towards civil equality. But every step has been disputed. Every claim for civil equality made by those who formed the vast majority of the population and who bore the burden of civil duties was met with a charge of intolerance, and with a protest against intruding religion into the affairs of civil life. That is to say, those who had already secured for themselves political and social privileges through religious exclusiveness raised the cry of religious exclusiveness against the vast majority of the population for claiming their just share of civil rights as they bore their share of civil duties. Catholics had either to remain resigned to their condition, or to protest against their faith being made a bar between them and civil justice. In doing so they have not sought to intrude religion into purely civil affairs; they rather have sought to extrude religious intolerance which, having taken up its abode, slammed the door in their face. Thus when Catholics claimed their civil rights it was called religious exclusiveness; when their neighbours were privileged by religious exclusiveness it was called civil rights.

(II) Catholic Tolerance in Practice.

Just a century ago Wm. Parnell, an Irish Protestant who knew Irish Catholics and their history well, wrote that “The Irish Roman Catholics are the only sect that ever resumed power without exercising vengeance.” Let us see if he was a true prophet as well as a true historian. When he wrote his “Historical Apology of the Irish Catholics” they were helpless, and almost hopeless. During the past eighty years they have been gradually regaining instalments of their civil rights. Their numerical strength could, in nearly every corner of the country, use those rights which they already have as an instrument wherewith to avenge the past. Have they, in fact, used their power thus?

For the sake of saving space I pass over Government and other such nominations. A better test of tolerance and intolerance is to be found in the statistics of public appointments to responsible positions which are elective. We get in that way a better key to the popular feeling.

Now, in recent centuries, and till 1842, Dublin was not allowed to have a Catholic Lord Mayor. It elected O’Connell at its first opportunity. And were the Protestant citizens ostracized henceforth? Since then it has had 23 Protestant Mayors and 38 Protestant Sheriffs. At present, its City Marshal, its City Surveyor and his assistant, Superintendent Electrical Engineer and four assistants, Drainage Engineer and two assistants, Superintendent Medical Officer of Health, Veterinary Inspector, Collector of Market Dues, and several other important offices are entrusted to non-Catholics. And the Catholics form the vast majority of the population.

In Belfast, the non-Catholics are about twice the number of the Catholics. The Corporation has never had a Catholic Mayor. Until a few years ago, when the City wards were re-distributed by order of Parliament, there was no Catholic Member of the Corporation. There are about 440 salaried officials, of whom about 10 are Catholics; and that these hold no office of importance may be seen at once in the fact that their combined salaries do not amount to more than £800 a year; whilst the Corporation pays in salaries about £70,000 a year. The anomaly is felt; and the apology made for it is that the Catholics hold offices quite in proportion to the rates they pay. It is implied that the Catholics are poor and pay little rates. The apology is not more creditable than the anomaly it is made to explain. It appears to be the custom in Belfast for the landlords to pay rates for the houses rented from them; the tenants thus pay rates in their rents. That practice nullifies the apology.

I pass now to the Counties. Co. Cork has a population of 403,000; of which 365,000 are Catholics, and 38,000 are non-Catholics. Of the salaried officials in the County, 151 are Catholics and 40 are non-Catholics.

Co. Tipperary has a population of 160,500; of which 151,000 are Catholics, and 9,500 are non-Catholics. There are 60 salaried officials, of whom 43 are Catholics and 17 are non-Catholics.

Co. Kerry has a population of 165,000; of which 160,000 are Catholics, and 5,000 are non-Catholics. There are 112 salaried officials, of whom 93 are Catholics and 19 are non-Catholics.

Co. Clare has a population of 112,000; of which 110,000 are Catholics, and 2,000 are Protestants. There are 68 salaried officials, of whom 62 are Catholics and 6 are Protestants.

So much for the South; let us pass to the North.

Co. Antrim has a population of 196,000; of which 40,000 are Catholics and 156,000 are non-Catholics. There are 65 salaried officials, of whom 5 are Catholics, and 60 are non-Catholics.

Co. Armagh has a population of 124,000; of which 56,000 are Catholics, and 68,000 are non-Catholics. There are 50 salaried officials, of whom 3 are Catholics and 47 are non-Catholics.

Co. Tyrone has a population of 150,000; of which 82,000 are Catholics, and 68,000 are non-Catholics. There are 52 salaried officials, of whom 5 are Catholics, and 47 are non-Catholics.

Co. Fermanagh has a population of 65,000; of which 36,000 are Catholics and 29,000 are non-Catholics. There are 75 salaried officials, of whom 17 are Catholics and 58 are non-Catholics. It will be observed also that in those counties supposed to be Protestant, the Catholic population of Tyrone, Armagh, and Fermanagh is 174,000, whilst the Protestant population is only 165,000. In Co. Antrim only, the Protestants are in a vast majority. And in Ballymoney, Antrim, Portrush, and some other towns of that county, there is not 1 Catholic in any elective body. On the other hand, I find that in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, where the Protestants are to the Catholics in the proportion of 1:9 of the population, they are in the proportion of 1:4 in the Borough Council. In Kinsale, Co. Cork, where the Protestants bear an extremely small proportion to the Catholics, they are as 1:4 in the Borough Council.

Nine years ago, through much trouble and correspondence, I made an inquiry into the provision made in Irish workhouses for the religious interests of their Protestant paupers. I made an analysis of the results, some of which I quote here from the 18th Chapter of “Catholicity and Progress in Ireland” (pp. 346-350).

“In 1882 there were 163 workhouses in Ireland; but some have disappeared, or have been amalgamated since then. At present there are 48 of these in which there is _usually no Protestant_ inmate. The Protestant Minister—

In 7 of these receives no salary. In 1, a salary of £4 a year for attending to nobody. In 5, £5, ditto In 2, £6 In 17, £10 In 2, £12 In 4, £15 In 5, £20 In 4, £25 In 1, £30

There are 25 workhouses with only _one_ Protestant pauper in each, and the Protestant chaplains receive in each £21 a year on an average. There are 12 workhouses with only _two_ Protestant paupers in each on an average: there is a Protestant chaplain for each; they receive on an average £21 a year. There are 12 workhouses with only _three_ Protestant paupers in each on an average. Each has a Protestant chaplain: they receive on an average £30 a year. There are 5 workhouses with only _four_ Protestant paupers in each on an average: their Protestant chaplains receive an average salary of £20 a year. There are 5 workhouses with only _five_ Protestant paupers in each on an average: their Protestant chaplains receive an average salary of £33 a year. There are 7 workhouses with only _six_ Protestant paupers in each on an average: their Protestant chaplains receive salaries of £25 a year on an average. There is 1 workhouse with _seven_ Protestant paupers on an average: the Protestant chaplain receives £30 a year. There are 2 workhouses with _eight_ Protestant paupers in each on an average: in 1 of these the Protestant chaplain gets £25 a year, in the other £30. In all those workhouses I have named there are 194 Protestant paupers on an average; and the Protestant chaplains receive a combined salary of £2,000 a year for attending them. Now nearly all the Guardians of those workhouses are Catholics; those who pay the poor rates are nearly all Catholics.

I do not write these facts in complaint: rather with pride. I give them as evidence of the sort of religious “intolerance” which is practised by Irish Catholics on those few Protestant paupers; who indeed are so few that their having to be in a workhouse at all is not creditable to the wealthy Protestants of Ireland. The money spent in the vain attempt to proselytize a certain degraded remnant of the Catholic poor, if spent on those few Protestant paupers, would make workhouse life unnecessary for them.

(III) The Papal Decrees.

A great noise has been made about the _Ne temere_ Decree, and the recent _Motu proprio_. They have been used to illustrate a phase of Catholic “intolerance” which is supposed to constitute a constant danger to society. I hope to make plain that those who have raised the cry have been shouting into space, and that, moreover, they have been throwing stones out of glass houses. Those laws have been made for Catholics only; Catholics only are bound by them; therefore only they have a right to protest if there be any cause of complaint. Or are we to understand that Catholics are not free to have their own religious rules and usages without the approval of outsiders? It will be answered: Certainly, but this _Ne temere_ Decree might affect Protestants also. How? Well, it ordains that unless Catholics get married before an authorised priest the marriage is null; they are not married. Hence, if a Catholic and a Protestant attempt to get married before a parson or a registrar, as the law of the land allows, there is no marriage in the eyes of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic party is bound in conscience to disown it. That is what has been said; but it is not correct. What the Catholic party would be bound in conscience to do in such a case is to set things right by making it a valid marriage. But what if the parties will not comply with the _Ne temere_ law? Then they go their own way, and the Catholic Church has no more to say to them. But if the Catholic party, getting conscience-stricken, should determine to disown it as a marriage, will not the Protestant party be the sole sufferer? Not at all; because the Protestant party can appeal to the law of the land for conjugal rights, since in the eyes of the law the marriage is valid; and an attempt by the Catholic party to contract marriage with anyone else would be punished as bigamy. On the other hand, if the Protestant party should for any reason determine to disown it as a marriage, the Catholic party cannot in conscience appeal to the law of the land for conjugal rights; because according to the Catholic conscience there are no conjugal rights, since there is no marriage. It should be observed that, also in the case of two Catholics, there is no marriage if they attempt to get married before any other priest than the authorized priest. The _Ne temere_ Decree was meant for Catholics only. It was not at all meant for Protestants, and it can only affect a Protestant through a Catholic. Now, the Catholic Church does not wish a Protestant to marry a Catholic. Quite otherwise. In fact, Catholics are forbidden to marry Protestants without a special permission, which is not given without good cause assigned. But if any Protestants should desire to marry Catholics, they know the conditions they have to fulfil. If they object to those conditions they are quite free to seek some other partner less tied by religious conditions than a Catholic is. If a Protestant say, “I like this Catholic, but I don’t like these conditions,” the Catholic reply is simple and straight: “If you want the Catholic you must take the conditions too; it is intolerant conceit for you to expect that the Catholic Church should shape its discipline to make it fit in with some possible affections which might some time or other possess you.”

The result of all the noise made about this _Ne temere_ Decree has been just what those who have made the noise little thought of, and least of all desired; namely, it has left them without a shadow of excuse, or even the semblance of a grievance. Their cry has become their nemesis. It has so promulgated the Decree that they, no more than Catholics, can plead ignorance of it, or of the consequence of not observing it. Hence what they in future do in regard to it, they will do with their eyes open; and if they count the cost they have only themselves to blame.

But if these remarks I have made help to silence the _Ne temere_ cry, another like grievance is not far to seek. It is remarkable that, whilst there are several Catholic marriage laws the import of which is exactly the same as that of the _Ne temere_ Decree, we never hear a word said about them. Here is one: A Protestant has a sister-in-law who is a Catholic. His wife dies. His Catholic sister-in-law marries him without the necessary dispensation. That marriage is null in the eyes of the Catholic Church. But it is valid before the law of the land since the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act was passed. That Protestant and his deceased wife’s Catholic sister are precisely in the same predicament in which a Protestant and a Catholic are who attempt marriage in defiance of the _Ne temere_ Decree. There are other similar instances amongst the Catholic marriage laws. There have been for centuries. The _Ne temere_ Decree itself is but a slightly modified form of one three centuries old. Thus, if the _Ne temere_ cry is serious, the party who raised it have been standing at the mouth of a volcano for generations, and have escaped unhurt. Why then have those other Catholic marriage laws been left in place, whilst the _Ne temere_ Decree has raised a storm? The only difference one can see is that the _Ne temere_ Decree happened to appear on the eve of some parliamentary elections, and the consciences of some scrupulous persons were suddenly awakened to the danger it brought.

_Tu quoque_ is not a logical reply; but at the tail of an argument it does not come amiss. Well, then, in England the law recognises no other marriages than those contracted before the parson or the registrar. Let a Protestant and a Catholic therefore get married before a priest, without the presence or knowledge of the parson or the registrar, it is a valid marriage in the eyes of the Catholic Church and binds the conscience of the Catholic party; but it is no marriage in the eyes of the law. So far the case is the exact converse of the _Ne temere_ Decree. But it goes farther; for it holds not only in the case of a Protestant and Catholic but also in the case of two Catholics. The law of the land will not recognise a marriage contracted by two Catholics in their own church and before their own priest, unless the registrar or the parson be present. On the contrary, the _Ne temere_ Decree does not in any sense touch the case of two Protestants. Now, Catholics think, and justly so, that a priest is quite as qualified a witness for the marriage of Catholics as the parson is for the marriage of Protestants, or as the registrar is for the marriage of either. The Catholics have in this a real grievance; and they feel it; yet their consciences have not been so wounded nor their hearts so broken as to think of exhibiting them bleeding before their country upon election hustings. Political consciences show strange phenomena.

What is decreed by the _Motu proprio_ has been in force since the Constitution _Apostolicae Sedis_ was published in 1869. Yet during those forty-two years nobody seems to have been hurt by it; and nobody seems to have been concerned except Catholics till lately. The _Motu proprio_ obliges Catholics, under threat of excommunication not to bring ecclesiastics before lay tribunals without the permission of their bishop. It binds ecclesiastics equally with lay Catholics. It does not, and cannot, touch non-Catholics in any sense; a very plain proof of which is that it threatens with excommunication those to whom it applies. That censure of excommunication should convince anyone that the _Motu proprio_ cannot possibly apply to non-Catholics. They are not within the Church; and how could those be put outside it who have not been within it? It applies to Catholics only, whether lay or cleric. But not to all Catholics. The Holy Office issued a Decree in 1870 in which it declared that “the excommunication does not affect subordinates, even though they be judges.” A Catholic functionary acting in his official capacity does not come under the Decree. It will at once then be seen how unfair are the following words spoken by Mr. Campbell, who represents the Dublin University in Parliament. Speaking at a meeting in Dublin on January 4th, 1912, he said of two Irish Catholic Judges: “They might be called upon any day in the exercise of their duty to their Sovereign to put the law in force against a Catholic priest. If they did so, _ipso facto_ they incurred excommunication.” He thus explained the meaning of the _Motu proprio_ for his audience, in face of the following words which he also read for his audience. The excommunication is against “those who compel, whether directly or indirectly, lay judges to summon ecclesiastical persons before lay tribunals.” Thus the excommunication is against _those who compel_ the judges; so that Mr. Campbell’s interpretation implies that _the judges_ are one and the same with _those who compel them_. Catholics, then, and Catholics only (clerics as well as lay) are forbidden to bring ecclesiastics before lay tribunals, without the permission of their bishop; which permission, the Holy Office decrees, “the bishop shall never refuse, in case he fails to reconcile the parties.” If a Catholic (lay or ecclesiastic) thinks that an ecclesiastic, for instance, owes him a debt, and the ecclesiastic denies it and refuses to pay, the Catholic (priest or layman) who makes the claim is bound by the _Motu proprio_ to have recourse to the bishop first, in order to have the matter arranged amicably. If the bishop fails to settle it, he is not left free to give or refuse his consent to have the case brought before the Civil Court. The Holy Office decrees that “he shall never refuse.” Even in those times and countries when and where Ecclesiastical Courts existed to try the civil cases of clerics, the purpose of the _Privilegium Fori_ was not to grant ecclesiastics any immunity from the civil law of their country, but to provide that in their civil cases they should be tried by an Ecclesiastical Court. The privilege was not as to the law of the land, but as to the court that was to try them according to that law.

What the _Motu proprio_ orders is just what Catholic instinct moves every Catholic worthy of the name to do. In Ireland and everywhere, Catholics, and many Protestants also, if they think they have a cause of complaint against a priest, for debt or otherwise, make known their case first to his bishop. If the bishop fails to compose the question, then they bring the case before the lay tribunals; permission to do which, as the Holy Office lays down, the bishop “shall never refuse.”

I have explained the meaning and scope of this _Motu proprio_ as though it applied to Ireland. But according to the evidence of Cardinal Cullen, the highest authority on Canon Law who has lived in these countries for a century, the Caput _Cogentes_ of the _Apostolicae Sedis_ does not hold in Ireland; and that being so, the _Motu proprio_ does not apply to Ireland, for it is a confirmation of the Caput _Cogentes_.

What this awful _Motu proprio_ orders, then, is just what fraternal charity, a sense of the fitness of things, even common sense, would suggest. So befitting does the procedure ordered by the _Motu proprio_ appear to a writer in the January number of _The Review of Reviews_ that he says, “it might very well be extended to all Christian men, whether lay or clerical”; and he suggests that the civil authorities in England would do wisely to take a leaf out of the book of Pius X.

As a matter of fact, something parallel to it exists in every society. There is not an association of any kind in England, Ireland, or elsewhere, which has not some rules which bind its members under pain of expulsion. In Chapter VII. of his “Middle Ages,” Hallam writes:

“The spiritual Courts in England, whose jurisdiction is so multifarious, and in general so little of a religious nature, had, till lately, no means of compelling an appearance much less of enforcing a sentence, but by excommunication.”

He writes in a note:

“By a recent Statute, the 33 Geo. III., c. 127, the writ, _de excommunicato capiendo_, as a process in contempt was abolished in England, but retained in Ireland.”

Both in England and in Ireland there are, of course, rules for expulsion, or excommunication, in every union, society, and club in the country. But a rule more like the _Motu proprio_ than any that I know of, is in the constitutions of the Dublin University which Mr. Campbell represents in Parliament. According to Letters Patent 13 Charles I.:

“All domestic differences shall be examined, and if possible decided within the College.... He who brings another into Court, without the consent of the Provost and the majority of the Senior Fellows, shall be expelled from the College.”

It is in every particular like the _Motu proprio_ of which Mr. Campbell spoke, in a Catholic city and country, as “an arrogant and insolent decree” which “aims a deadly blow at the sanctity and security of property.” I do not believe that he was conscious of the offensiveness of his words. But such has been the fruit and habit of Protestant privilege in Ireland. Some, even men of position and education like Mr. Campbell, remain as if unconscious that the “old order changes.” They fail to fit themselves into the change which a century has made; and “If in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?” Catholics, whilst they have their own thoughts about the constitutions and rules of other Religious Bodies than theirs, do not meddle with or question them. The _Ne temere_ Decree and the _Motu proprio_ are, as I have explained, for the discipline of us Catholics exclusively. We do not seek for them the approval of outsiders. But we cannot help thinking that the diatribes to which we have been subjected in connection with those two Pontifical Acts have been inspired rather by political and social jealousy than by a spirit of toleration or love of fair play. I hope that most non-Catholics who read what I have written will be disposed to agree with me.

(IV) Some Protestant Views.

(1) A Church Of Ireland View. BY CANON COURTENAY MOORE, M.A.

It is under a deep sense of both privilege and responsibility that I contribute this article—of privilege because I feel very sensibly the honour done me in asking me to write it—and of responsibility because of the service it may or may not prove to be. A word about myself may be pardoned and may not be inappropriate.

I should know something about Ireland, as I was born in Ulster, in which province I lived for seventeen years, and naturally I then and there learned to know something of the manners and customs and feelings of Ulstermen. From Ulster I migrated to Leinster, where I spent eight years in the city of Dublin, six of these years in the University of Dublin, in which ancient seat of learning I was for four years a student in Arts, and for two in the Divinity School. On my ordination in 1865, I entered on clerical life in the Diocese of Cloyne, County of Cork; in which diocese I have remained ever since for the long period of close on forty-seven years. Therefore I say I ought to know something of Ireland and the Irish question; having been born in Ireland and having lived so long in it in three out of the four provinces. Moreover, I have been a regular student of Irish history, to some extent of the Irish language, and of Irish Archæology, and, as an Irish Antiquary, I have seen much of my native land in each and every Province. Strangers seem to think it very easy to make up their mind on the Irish question—you have only to take a return-ticket from Euston to Killarney, or from Paddington to Rosslare and the thing is done! I once heard His Grace Dr. Healy, the Archbishop of Tuam, tell a story about the way to acquire an English accent. He said that a certain Dublin Alderman, with a fine Dublin brogue, crossed from Kingstown to Holyhead; the passage was a rough one; there was much of “the wonderful up-and-down motion, that comes from the treacherous ocean.” So much indeed that the poor alderman lay sick in his berth in Holyhead harbour, and returned in the same boat without landing. But—“lo and behold you, sir,” as we say in Ireland—he came home with a fine English accent, which he never lost in later life! Well, some English visitors seem to have the same impression about the rapidity and facility with which they can make up the Irish question. “God help them” is all one can say. I am really not jesting or romancing at all! Within the present week an English literary lady called on me to interview me. Unfortunately I was out at the time, but she left a message to the effect that “she was going to write a book on Ireland,” and wished to talk to me about it! She had only been in the country a few days when she came to this conclusion! This reminds me of the story of a certain English nobleman who, when making the grand tour of Europe, found himself at Rome. He had an interview with the Pope of the period. He asked him could he see and know Rome in a few days time? The Pope replied: “You will imagine you know a good deal of it by that time.” “Well in a few weeks?” “You will then know less.” “In a few months?” “Still less.” “In a few years?” “Hardly anything at all.”

Well, is not this a parallel for the Irish question? It requires the study of a life-time almost to grapple with it at all—at least in any fairly satisfactory and complete form—in any really candid and impartial way. I may perhaps be permitted to say that another educational force in my own training on the subject has been, that I love intensely the country and the people. Froude opens his charming essay “A Fortnight in Kerry” thus:

“We have heard much of the wrongs of Ireland, the miseries of Ireland, the crimes of Ireland; every cloud has its sunny side; and, when all is said, Ireland is still the most beautiful island in the world, and the Irish themselves, though their temperament is ill-matched with ours, are still amongst the most interesting of peoples.”

This affectionate feeling should not be left out of consideration by outsiders who wish to understand the Irish Question. It has exercised an undying and indestructible influence upon the people of the country, and in certain respects a most beneficial influence. For example, many outsiders foolishly imagine that Irishmen are very volatile and variable; in some minor respects they may be, but in the main, no—it is absolutely otherwise. Can you find in the history of any other country greater fidelity to her own religious and political ideals than Ireland has shown over and over again—as we say “ever and always?”

Perhaps the preface to this paper seems unduly prolonged, but the reader must bear with it somewhat further, as it is necessary.

An objector may say to me that I have no right to speak for my fellow Irish Churchmen _en masse_, as regards their relations with their Roman Catholic fellow countrymen. Well, in answer to such an objection, which may be natural enough, there are several replies. I intend to speak from my own first-hand, definite, personal, life-long experiences, such as they have been. And is not the inference sufficiently fair and logical that others of my clerical brethren, similarly situated, have had just the same, or much the same, experiences if they would record them? I do not claim that our Roman Catholic neighbours have been kinder to me than to other Protestant clergy. Testimony from us in the South and West of Ireland is more valuable than testimony from Ulster. In Leinster, Munster and Connaught, we are brought more directly and distinctly face to face with the Roman Church. She has a dominant, nay, a pre-dominant position in these three provinces, and yet I hold that this vast numerical superiority of position does not lead to intolerant or unkindly action. I believe that there is far more real kindly feeling and kindly intercourse between Protestants and Roman Catholics in these Irish provinces than there is in Ulster—and, therefore, I maintain that Irish Protestant Churchmen who live in these provinces, have a far better right to judge and speak of the relative attitude of the two churches than the people of Ulster. For we, who do so live, have a larger knowledge and experience and outlook than the men of Ulster, whose views are in every sense narrower—geographically, politically and religiously. They indeed need to be reminded of the German proverb: “Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute” (Behind the mountains there are also people). We all need to study this saying. Behind the mountains of our knowledge, of our civilisation, of our success and activity; behind the mountains, let us also say, of our ignorance, of our pride and prejudice, of our contempt—there are also men.

Of course it is much pleasanter to be able to feel kindly and to speak kindly of the great majority of one’s fellow-countrymen if it can be done truthfully, as we believe it can—than to have to say and do the contrary. Even allowing for a certain element of unreality and exaggeration and insincerity, is not the uniform tone of too many political speeches much too violent and even occasionally too vitriolic? But I have little or no temptation to err in this respect, as the bulk of what remains to be said in this paper is chiefly concerned with facts. Two years after my ordination, the Fenian Rising occurred; this took place in 1867. I saw something of it, not of the Fenians themselves, but of the flying columns which were then scouring the country in pursuit of them. The police barrack at Kilmallock was attacked, and Protestant gentry living near Kilfinane in the same county, viz., Limerick, left their houses for several nights and took refuge with the Constabulary. There was at that time living at Kilfinane as rector, the Rev. George Wren. He was, as a clergyman, greatly beloved and respected. When some of his parishioners, most of them gentry, were leaving their homes for police protection, the Roman Catholic farmers in the parish waited on the Rev. George Wren at the rectory, and begged and intreated of him not to leave it, assuring him that “no one should lay a wet finger” on him or any member of his family. In consequence of this interview the Rev. Mr. Wren held his ground, and was the only Protestant gentleman in the immediate district who did so. It was exceedingly creditable to him, and to the deputation who waited on him. I have never forgotten this incident.

I remember well the excitement produced in Irish church circles by Mr. Gladstone’s Church Act in 1869 and 1870; how it was denounced, condemned and deplored; how it was described as fraught with wreck and ruin to Protestant interests. One clerical speaker warned Queen Victoria that she might have “her Crown kicked into the Boyne” (if she gave her Royal assent), as James II. had. A friend of my own, a captain in the Army, assured me he was prepared to wade knee-deep in blood to fight the Bill.

We are not unaccustomed to politicians of this type even now! Well, Mr. Gladstone passed his Church Act, which has proved in many respects a great blessing to the Irish Church. She gained self-action and independence thereby; her finances have been so skilfully administered and the liberality of her members has been so great that she has now a realised capital of over nine millions! It is estimated that for her numbers she is, in money, the richest Church in Christendom. None of us who belong to her would revert, were the offer open to us, to the state of her condition and circumstances prior to 1869—“Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” How true that parable of Samson’s has often proved with regard to changes which were, at first, denounced and dreaded, and afterwards regarded with gratitude! Generally, the effect produced on Irish public opinion by Mr. Gladstone’s Church Act, on the whole, was in time beneficial. It removed what was at least a “sentimental grievance” from Roman Catholics. It also taught them before very long that the Church of Ireland could exist as a voluntary institution; and some Nationalists from time to time have even said that the efficient and capable management of the Representative Church Body of the Church funds was an object lesson in favour of Home Rule.

Every one at all familiar with this subject knows that 1881 was a very terrible year in Ireland; it is unnecessary to enlarge upon the painful fact. Then, or thereabouts, I went to see a land-agent whose life had several times been attempted. It was in the summer; he was writing at a tall, stand-up desk, on the upper ledge of which lay a revolver. I sat down by an open window to enjoy the fresh air, from which he immediately pulled me away and deposited me in a corner of the room under shelter of a wall, not of glass. Presently we adjourned to the dining-room for lunch. This was also an arsenal or place of arms; a double-barrelled gun lay on a sofa. When my friend opened a press to obtain “the materials”—Irishmen will know what is meant—I saw therein a brace of horse-pistols. After lunch we went out for a walk, my friend carrying his gun under his arm, and, I suppose, his revolver in his pocket. A policeman armed with a loaded rifle, followed a few yards in our rear. Life under such circumstances could not have been very agreeable. Would anyone like to revert to it? Surely not. In the same year I was visiting an Irish landlord who was very seriously ill; his home was about four miles distant from my glebe house; sometimes I had to go to see him by night. One morning the doctor, who had been with the patient for several hours, was anxiously inquired of by the ladies of the family how their father was. “Well, all I have to say to you,” said the doctor, “is, that you may be very thankful that your father is allowed to die quietly in his bed such times as these.”

Well, what has improved such terrible times? Has it not been remedial legislation in different directions—legislation respecting the Church, the Land, and Education. Yet in all such cases remedial legislation has been initially denounced by a certain party as “Socialism,” “Sacrilege,” or by some equally strong expletive. And yet, what has been the result of these so-called “Socialistic” and “Sacrilegious” measures? Has it not, on the whole, and in the main, been good, decidedly and undeniably good? Let us apply our Blessed Lord’s text: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” “Can any man gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?” So, then, when I look back to these past painful experiences, and see how all proposed remedial legislation was, in the first instance, denounced and vilified, and when I recall how the results in time have refuted all the prophets of evil, I am quite inclined to say, is not the balance of evidence in favour of the view that something very much the same will be the case, and will happen with Home Rule? It is now constantly described by one leader as “A Nefarious Conspiracy.” Of course, different Parliamentary orators have their own favourite vocabularies, but is it not very much a case of:

“All now is wrangle, abuse and vociferance.”

“One is incisive, corrosive; Two retorts nettled, curt, crepitant; Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive; Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant; Five.... O Danaides, O Sieve.”

“Now they ply axes and crowbars; Now they prick pins at a tissue; Fine as a skein of the Casuist Escobar Worked on the bone of a lie—To what issue? Where is our gain at the Two-bars?”

Juvenal said of some Roman lawyers of his own day: “Iras et verba locant.” They still do it.

Here perhaps I may with advantage introduce some remarks made by me in Cork City on March 21st at a meeting of the County Technical Instruction Committee on the occasion of proposing a vote of congratulation to our Chairman the Bishop of Cloyne, on having gained a verdict in his favour in his Libel Action against the _Dundee Courier_:

“I would like, Sir, to say a few words just in explanation of this motion. It is the first opportunity that we have had of doing this since the trial, and as other public bodies have passed votes of congratulation to the Bishop, it is specially becoming that we should do so, as he is Chairman of our Committee. I first made the acquaintance of the Bishop in 1893, when I was making a little antiquarian tour in the County Kildare with another antiquary, and on arriving at Maynooth we ordered some dinner at the hotel there. I was anxious to see Maynooth College, we went on there, and we happened to see Dr. Browne, who was then President of Maynooth; and he with true Irish hospitality at once invited us to stay to dine, which we did, and I had a pleasant experience of his hospitality and kindness on that occasion. And I must say that my own experience of him since he became Bishop of Cloyne has always been the same, that by tact and kindness and courtesy he has gained our regard and respect. I think I might venture to say in connection with the present controversy about the introduction of Home Rule into the country—which has, of course, caused a great deal of excitement—it would not be natural to expect that such a measure would be received in silence, but surely it is possible that the people who want to discuss this question should discuss it on non-controversial grounds. I think, for example, it should be discussed on financial grounds or on constitutional grounds, and apart altogether from religious grounds. But I fear there are too many controversial politicians, and that this religious element in the discussion has not only dominated it, but has become predominant, and is greatly to be regretted; and it seems to me that this action against the _Dundee Courier_ is an illustration of this, and that the Bishop found it necessary to vindicate his character against unfounded charges which were capable of being made political capital of. It seems to me that the argument comes to this, that people raise controversial arguments which involve the very serious charge that the lives of the Protestants and the property of the Protestants in the country would hardly be safe under the new Parliament. Now this is a very serious indictment, and I wonder whether the people who make this consider its seriousness and the injury it does to both sides. I think it does those people who make this charge much harm—it tends to make them censorious and uncharitable, and it naturally embitters the people against whom this charge is made—that is, four-fifths of the population of the whole country. I am afraid that there are too many of these controversial politicians at work. I have lived all my clerical life in the County Cork for over forty years, and my own impression when I hear charges of this kind flung broadcast about the people of Ireland is this—that the people who make them really can’t know how happily, for example, we get on in the province of Munster, how much kindness there is, and how much real good feeling—genuine good feeling prevails between Protestant and Catholic.”

“I can certainly say for myself with perfect truth that during my long residence in this county, for a period of over forty years, I never received anything but kindness and consideration, and during that long period the county has been agitated very seriously. I remember the Fenian Rising in 1867, the Church Act in 1869 and 1870, and I remember other troubles in the county, but, personally speaking, I never received anything but kindness and consideration. A short time after my ordination I was told by a senior clergyman of the diocese how to act towards the people. He said: ‘I will give you a recipe—be friendly to the people in this county and you will find that they will be friendly to you,’ and I certainly found them so without a single exception or contradiction.”

The Bishop was from home when this meeting took place, but on his return he wrote me a very kind and complimentary letter from which I quote a few sentences:

“Bishop’s House,

“Queenstown.

“_April 2nd_, 1912.

“DEAR CANON COURTENAY MOORE,—Allow me to congratulate you most sincerely on the tone and character of your speech, which has done much to foster among us all, charity, peace and brotherhood. I have heard all manner of men speaking of your action on that occasion in the highest terms of praise.”

“When there lies round about us so much good to be done by our common united forces, why should we spoil the opportunity of doing good by senseless and generally ill-founded suspicion and quarrels?

“Yours faithfully,

“ROBERT BROWNE.

“_Bishop of Cloyne_.”

I desire to add an extract here from a letter written to me by the late Rev. Father Horgan, P.P. of Kilworth, Co. Cork. He was a very cultivated man; he had been for eight years in the Irish College at Rome and had also made a voyage round the world. He had “read in the book of the world,” and in addition to his extensive and accurate knowledge of theology he had acquired a great knowledge of Art from his residence in Rome. About two years before his death he wrote me a very touching letter from which the following is an extract:

“I have given up all thoughts of change of place. My outlook and my hope are homewards, and may the good God support and strengthen us both to and through the end which awaits us to our rest.”

I fear there may be too much egotism and too little reticence in my placing such kindly and even confidential communications as these before the public, yet my motive for doing so is simply to show how much real kindly feeling and friendly intercourse exist between members of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches in Ireland, especially in those districts where the vast numerical predominance of the former Church might, as some suppose and suggest, provoke her to intolerance, which in my opinion is not the case at all. Of course I do not profess to do more than offer a general opinion founded on my own personal experience, and on my knowledge of Irish history in the past. But when I look back upon the past and think for example on the state of Ireland during the “Tithe Wars,” as described by such a writer as Lecky, and on my own recollections of Ireland in the days of the Land League, and compare with these periods the present happy and peaceful condition of the country, and ask myself what has produced such a blessed and beneficial change, is not the answer plain enough that it has been the progress of healing and remedial legislation? Well, then, if impending legislation in the direction of Home Rule is a further concession to national sentiment and likely to prove a further development of and outlet for national knowledge of what the country requires, and an application of her own energies and resources for the purpose, why should one dread and deprecate the experiment? I have lived through too many Irish crises to be afraid of another. I do not venture to speak dogmatically, still less despairingly, but I feel on the whole that this new departure will tend to good like its predecessors. I am inclined to ask, why should the Roman Catholic people of Ireland persecute Protestants, if Home Rule be granted—some will say, oh, because they will then have greatly increased power and influence in their own hands, and they will therefore be tempted to use it, and will use it in this direction. I find it hard to believe this, I am very slow to believe it, judging from my own experience of Ireland. May I not put it in this way plausibly and reasonably enough: why should not such an extension of self-government gratify the Irish National Party, and produce even better and still more kindly feeling towards their Protestant fellow countrymen than already exists? If we must make a calculus of probabilities in such an event, ought we not to take into account the mollifying influence of the possession of increased powers, just as much as the temptation to misuse them in the direction of intolerance. Besides, will it not be the policy of the leaders of the Home Rule movement, should it become an accomplished fact, to conciliate—much rather than to coerce—those who oppose the movement? As Mr. Redmond has recently said, “some repudiate Ireland, but Ireland will not repudiate them.” We may for a time in the near future have a period of some unrest, anxiety, possibly even danger, but we must hope that this will pass. Certain Irish proverbs show something of the tone of the national mind. Here are a few: are they not very instructive and descriptive?

“One must cut the gad nearest the throat.”

“The first thread is not of the piece.”

“A small share of anything is not worth much, but a small share of sense _is_ worth much.”

“It isn’t day yet.”

“Nil lā fòs e.”

All these proverbs show that Ireland has “learned to labour and to wait:”

“Look not mournfully into the past, It comes not back again ... Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.”

(2) A Presbyterian View, BY REV. J. B. ARMOUR, M.A.

The question of Home Rule for Ireland has been discussed from all sides now for more than a quarter of a century: and at present it holds the field. Everything from the constitutional, commercial, and religious aspect of the problem has been said in an italicised form. The history of the controversy has shown considerable change of view, at least on the part of the opponents of the measure, and the bitterness against the idea has become in many cases a mere scream, a sign that the foundation of their objections to the proposal is giving way. At the first mention of Home Rule, the majority of the constitutional lawyers entered the lists, and satisfied themselves that the measure would violate the constitution, lead to the dismemberment of the Empire, and the final separation of Ireland from the Crown. The stipendiary politician, of whom we have many, especially in the North of Ireland, said: “I thank thee, O Jew, for teaching me that word,” and rang the changes on the word “separation,” dubbing every adherent of the Liberal cause as a separatist. The saner constitutional lawyers have come to the conclusion that the idea of separation has no foundation in fact, and could not, if mooted, have the slightest hope of success. A community which has not the power of raising an Army or a Navy could hardly venture on rebellion. Ireland is largely an agricultural country, and, seeing that the farmers in a few years will be sitting under their own vine and fig tree, possessors as well as tillers of the soil, it is almost unthinkable that even five per cent. of the population would think of risking their all in an enterprise which could not be successful, and, if successful, would close against them their best markets. The Irish people are sometimes credited with a double dose of original sin and folly, but their sense of humour would save them from such a cut-throat policy. The soldiers they have sent into the British Army, taken from the lower strata of social life, have proved as loyal to the British Crown as the Scotch Highlanders. The Curragh, and other camps for soldiers in Ireland, will not be broken up when Home Rule comes. The fear of Home Rule leading to separation has receded to the background of the controversy, and is now the monopoly of obscure politicians.

I am asked to say something on the question from a Presbyterian point of view. It is a little difficult to state the number of those in favour of the measure, and of those not actively opposed thereto, especially as those who pose as exponents of Presbyterianism have set themselves, with considerable success, to destroy the right of free speech and to ban the right of private judgment as a pestilential heresy—two of the essential factors in living Protestantism. To hamstring these principles is to leave Protestantism with a name to live, though it is dead. These Anti-Home Rulers have been threatening, and are carrying out their threat, to boycott any parson who shows signs of scepticism about the infallibility of their _credo_. Boycotting is a serious offence, if practised in any form in the South and West of Ireland, but it is the eleventh Commandment of the Anti-Home Rulers among the Protestants, and is being observed with greater strictness than any of the Ten Words. Under the reign of TERRORISING PREJUDICE it is not easy to indicate the number of those, especially in the Presbyterian Church, who refuse to make Anti-Home Rule an article of a standing or falling Church. But the drastic methods used to repress free speech, and the right of private judgment on a political question, are indications that the secret disciples of Home Rule are not only a large but an increasing number. As one who has believed in Home Rule for many years, as one who, while treated with courtesy and kindliness by leading Unionists, has been thrice stoned by their noisy followers, I venture to give an _apologia pro mea vita_.

(_a_) I accept the principle of Home Rule for Ireland because it is the principle of the Presbyterian Church Government applied to secular affairs; a principle which has worked well in the Colonies where there are mixed races and religions; a principle which is a fundamental one in the United States of America; a principle which, truly democratic, has proved itself the salt of social life wherever applied, and, in the case of our Colonies, has been a link binding the Colonies with hooks of steel to the British Crown. Why or how it will lead to red ruin and the breaking up of laws in Ireland is not very clear, save to the “dryting prophets” of the dolorous breed. As a matter of fact, that principle of Protestantism was suggested to the Catholics by Protestants. The idea of Home Rule for Ireland was bred in the brain of some Fellows of T.C.D. Isaac Butt was its Cicero, and Parnell brought the idea into practical politics. Home Rule is the child of Protestant parents, and its adherents in all the branches of Protestant Churches are many. All the Unionists of the saner type admit the common sense of the principle, and they say that if Ireland were Scotland they would have nothing to say against an Irish Parliament for purely local purposes. But they insist that a true principle, if administered by Irishmen, would lead to a reign of terror and tyranny. The answer to that is this. The Conservative Government has already granted the half of the principle in the establishment of County Councils, which Lord Salisbury said would be more mischievous than Home Rule pure and simple—though in spite of his _ex-cathedra_ opinion he set them up. The Irish Conservative papers at the time said bitterly that the Councils were the half-way house to Home Rule. In existence now for years, they have worked wonderfully well without a tithe of the evil predicted to follow in their train. People argue on the question as if the Irish representatives would never take a statesmanlike view of any matter for the public good, and as if Protestantism would have no share in the deliberations of an Irish Parliament with a fourth of the representatives in Dublin Protestants, and with an upper House nominated with a view to the protection of minorities. The belief that democracy in Ireland would become a persecutor of Protestants and a robber of the commercial classes can only arise in the minds of those who hate democracy and all its works, though the democratic principle wherever tried has been the parent of much that is good in social life. It is becoming the conviction of the thinking portion of the Protestant world that the question MUST be settled by the one party or the other on lines satisfactory to Irishmen generally; and notwithstanding the whirling words uttered by the landlords and their entourage at Balmoral, it is firmly believed that Mr. Bonar Law would like to have a hand in establishing an Irish Parliament for Irish affairs.

(_b_) Home Rule would undo to a large extent the evils of the paper Union of 1800, modifying racial animosities, introducing a new spirit of patriotism and healing the sores of long standing. The means by which the Union of Ireland with England was effected were so destructive of everything moral in political life that every thinking man denounces them as infamous, and they are without a defender past or present. It is tolerably certain that 90 per cent. of the Protestants of Ireland, including a large number of the landlords who refused to be bribed, were as bitter against the destruction of the Irish Parliament as their descendants are against its restoration. Listening to the harangues against an Irish Parliament, one can only conclude that the applauding auditors regard their ancestors as fools. To have a dance on the graves of one’s ancestors may be a new amusement, but it is hardly respectful to the memory of brave men whose opinions of the hurtful effects to Ireland from the Union and the loss of a legislature have been fully justified by events. Nobody can say that the Union has been a success. For fully seventy years of the nineteenth century the government of Ireland was a legalised tyranny, the whole political power of making and administering laws for Ireland was in the hands of the landlords, who were allowed to rob and spoil at their will the Irish tenants, Protestant and Catholic. A tenant’s Protestantism did not save him from a rack rent; it often increased the rack rents. For generations the tenants of Ireland had to pay between five and ten millions beyond what was just and fair, and those millions might as well have been cast into the Irish Channel as far as bringing any benefit to Ireland was concerned. The Imperial Parliament is heavily in debt to Ireland for the spoliation of the Irish farmers and labourers which it permitted. Irishmen of all creeds, as they look back on a long spell of slavery, have no right to join in singing pæans to the Union. If changes were made in the laws bringing a modicum of justice to Irishmen, giving them a right to call their votes their own, and a right to part of the property they created, the predecessors of the Unionists of to-day have no claim to credit for the changes, as they fought with the same savageness they are showing towards Home Rule against the introduction of the ballot, and took as their motto “tenants’ rights are landlords’ wrongs.” The thanks of Irishmen are due to the Liberal Party, led by Mr. Gladstone, and backed powerfully by the Nationalist Members. Unionists of every colour are dwelling on the prosperity of Ireland, quoting statistics about the tremendous increase of sheep and swine. They forget two things, one of which is that Ireland since the Union has lost 50 per cent. of its inhabitants, but they say “What of that? We have a large increase of sheep and swine, the true index of a nation’s prosperity.” The Founder of our faith did not agree with the Unionist conception of the relative value of sheep and men. He said: “How much is a man better than a sheep,” a saying which covers an Irish Catholic as well as a Protestant Home Ruler. Men are better than sheep, Unionists notwithstanding. Then they forget that Ireland’s prosperity, whatever it is, began with Mr. Gladstone’s legislation, which the Conservatives held would ruin the country and break up the Empire. His legislation was the introduction of the democratic principle into politics, and democracy has proved itself worthy of acceptation. Home Rule is the extension of the democratic idea, and in spite of all that has been said in strident tones against the measure, its acceptance will tend to social health and wealth, and not one hundredth part of the evil its opponents associate with its passing can result therefrom. The prophecies about the evils resulting from Liberal legislation have been falsified in every instance. The Ballot Act would have upset the Throne, according to the Tories, but the Throne is on a firmer basis now than it has been since the days of the Conqueror. The disestablishment of the Irish Church was to ruin religion, but after more than forty years religion in the Episcopal Church of Ireland is healthier than ever. Home Rule will “heal the breaches of many generations.”

(_c_) Home Rule in Ireland, so far from ruining Protestantism, will give Protestantism a chance of being judged on its own merits. _Hitherto Protestantism has been handicapped by its political associations._ The system so long in vogue of compelling the Irish peasant to pay tithe for the support of an established Church where the peasant never worshipped, evoked the dislike of the majority of our countrymen for Protestantism and all its works. If that cause of active hatred was removed, the fact that Protestantism was still the religion of the majority of the landlords who demanded more than their pound of flesh from the tenants did not commend that form of religion as a gospel of love. Then the fact, so evident still, that the bureaucracy which is ruling Ireland is largely Protestant, the highest positions of dignity and emolument in connection with the State machinery being held, not by Protestants of all sects but by those belonging to a certain sect, has not been conducive to unprejudiced views of Protestantism as a religious system. The fear that the management of the State machinery will not remain in the hands of the descendants of the ascendency party is perhaps the strongest factor in opposition to Home Rule. As far as the Presbyterian Church is concerned, its members cannot possibly under Home Rule have a less share in the offices of emolument and dignity than they have had all down the years from 1800 to 1912. Protestantism will enter on a new career as a spiritual rather than a political force, and will prove its right to have its share in our country’s welfare. Persecution for conscience sake is a game played out, as the practice of persecution for religious opinions has hurt the persecutor more than the persecuted. Persecution cripples industry, and, as the world has become very practical, fears of persecution are to be largely discounted, especially as it would be rather difficult to persecute the fourth of the inhabitants. _Some_ of those who are exploiting the persecuting bogey for political ends have not much religion to persecute. The fears of a militant Catholic Duke who hates Home Rule, and who is credited with intriguing at Rome against it, ought to modify the fears of timid Protestants who urge that Home Rule must necessarily mean Rome Rule. To their credit, Irish Catholics, alone in the Catholic world, have never been known to persecute for religious beliefs. A martyr for conscience sake has never been heard of in Erin. On April 11th of this year, a letter was addressed to Mr. Redmond, signed by the leading Protestants of Dublin, in which they assert that Protestants have always been treated with courtesy by their Catholic neighbours in the south and west, and in which they repudiate the idea of persecution in the future. They send Mr. Redmond a considerable subscription for his fund as a proof that their letter is not words, but an expression of well-grounded conviction. I have no fear for true Protestantism in the future, either in Ireland or elsewhere, though political Protestantism has had its day.

(_d_) Instead of diminishing, Home Rule will increase, the commerce of Ireland. It is curious that, at all the Conventions called to denounce Home Rule, the fear of the ruin of commerce has been more prominent than the fear of the destruction of the Protestant religion. They have been reversing the great rule of life “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and these things shall be added unto you.” So obviously has the commercial side been thrust into the front rank of this controversy that a cynical friend—worthy to be a brother of the Member for Sark—has suggested that the meetings should have been opened by a hymn to commerce: “O God of Commerce help us, for the man from Waterford intends to cut down your groves.” A more fantastic idea or one more devoid of all probability never took possession of men. Democracy has always been favourable to commerce, and commercial prosperity follows in its train. To imagine that a Parliament in Dublin would heap taxes on the rich is unthinkable, as any taxes on Ulster would weigh as heavily on other parts of Ireland. The Irish people of any creed are not fond of paying taxes, and one might take it for granted that a change in the administration of Irish affairs will not necessitate increased taxation. The administration of the Government machinery in Ireland is the costliest in any country, and is bound to decrease largely as the country settles. The cost of bills promoted by Irish Corporations for needed corporate improvements is enormous, and it frightens social reformers from attempting to get things which stand in the way of public good set right. No statement was ever further from the truth than that which is made so often, that the Imperial Parliament is ready to amend every real Irish grievance. There are hundreds of necessary reforms which would contribute to the prosperity of the country. These cannot be attempted because of the cost and the difficulty of getting them discussed in the Imperial Parliament. If settled in Dublin, they could be better done at one fifth of the expense. The Commerce of Ireland stands to gain by Home Rule. An increase of commerce always leads to a spirit of tolerance.

To those of my fellow religionists who are frightened by the very term—Home Rule, I would say “Who is he that will harm you if ye are followers of that which is good?”

(3) A Nonconformist View. BY REV. W. CRAWFORD, M.A.

It must be a matter of constant surprise, to those who have been accustomed to distinguish political from religious questions, to find religion for ever obtruded into discussions of the Irish problem. Can’t men follow their religious convictions under any form of government? they will impatiently cry; why then complicate an already difficult subject by importing considerations on which some men appear always to be least reasonable? But it may as well be recognised at once that “religion” is generally at the base of the opposition to Home Rule, and that the British government of Ireland, as it is responsible for that peculiar feature of the case, must in all equity find a solution of the problem and a remedy for those evils which have embittered Irish life for centuries, and which to-day stand as the one great obstacle to England’s last act of reparation for the wrongs of the past. An alien Church has been disestablished; a tyrannical land system is at enormous cost being revolutionised; and now the traditional animosity of Protestant to Roman Catholic, manifested in the general opposition of the Churches of the Reformation in Ireland to the demand for Home Rule, and enforced by every argument which the history of centuries can afford, must be dealt with.

The errors of a dark past cannot be undone; but each successive measure of conciliation has brought increased contentment and prosperity to the country; and, sure as there is a God in heaven, the repeal of the last and greatest wrong, an Act of Union which no honest historian can defend, will be the harbinger of lasting peace. To deal at once with the Protestant attitude to Home Rule, the Churches in an overwhelming majority stand solid against it. The opposition is confined to no class, being, if anything, more bitter and unreasoning in the lower grades of society. It is impossible to give any accurate estimate of the number of Protestant Home Rulers, and the much advertised totals of 95 to 98 per cent. of Unionists are mere fictions, as there never has been a poll taken on the question; and for easily understood reasons those in favour of suspected or unfashionable causes are slow to declare their opinions or convictions. Liberalism is essentially “vulgar” in Ireland; and Nationalism is taboo in all polite society. That exclusive clique, among whom heredity, tradition, and “Church principles” reign supreme, has had a long ascendency in Ireland. In affluence amid poverty, with every advantage of education and influence over the unprivileged many, their pride has been to stand aloof from popular causes, and to decry every agitation for redress. Isolated Liberals, too few and scattered to form a community, have had to lie low, or risk their social position and business prospects. Of late years there has been some access of courage, and an increasing number in all professions and trades, except those directly dependent for support on the upper classes, have greatly ventured in taking a stand on the people’s side. Among the younger generations, the choicest spirits, true followers of Davis Emmett and Fitzgerald, have always been found on the popular side; but, on the whole, heredity prevails, tradition rules, and convention, under the guise of religion and Empire, drills the Protestant mass on the side of Unionism.

Ulster is the crux of the Home Rule problem; and Protestantism is the _raison d’étre_ of its opposition; as we are being ever reminded by Church assemblies, Orange lodges, and political orators whose interest in the welfare of so Puritan a faith is admirable indeed, and full of promise for their future. The “religion” may sometimes appear to be of a peculiar political cast, and difficult to reconcile with ordinary Christianity; but such as it is, in it a serious fact has to be reckoned with. Its genesis, as well as the present condition of Ireland, can be understood only in the light of the history of the last four centuries. The attitude of Protestantism generally does not need a separate discussion, being marked by the same characteristics (as it originated, for the most part, in the same events) as that of the North of Ireland. It is in the confiscations and plantations of the seventeenth century that the origin of political Protestantism is to be found. That nefarious plan of conquest and government was old as the Normans; but it is to the later phases of it adopted by the English rulers from James I. to Cromwell that the establishment of the Protestant races and families now in possession of the land may be traced. Recollect that the planters were English and Scotch Protestants put in possession of the lands and homes of Irish Roman Catholics, who were relegated to Connaught, and farther, or held in complete subjection by the conquering race. Their religion was proscribed, and all civil rights were denied them. No doubt the object was rather to extinguish a nation, than a creed; but the fact remains that in his paternal solicitude, “the interests of His Majesty’s _Protestant_ subjects were his greatest care, and must first be provided for” (17 & 18 Charles II.); and the “mere Irish” were sacrificed for the purpose. The “settlements” of Ireland resulted in the fact that to a very large extent the history of Ireland until to-day is involved in the land question, and in the doings of contending religious factions.

Thus favoured by the State, and supported in their armed possession of property and ascendency, the Irish Protestants developed at once the masterful qualities so natural to the British in relation to subject races, loyalty to their benefactors whose garrison they were, stern adherence to the religion which was the badge of their predominance, and a firm determination, at all cost to others, to maintain a state of affairs so favourable to their welfare here and hereafter.

To hark back thus to a distant past, seeking the origin of the events of the present, may appear unnecessarily provocative of bad feeling. It is pleasanter to dwell on the social amenities and Christian charities which have often marked the relations of Roman Catholic and Protestant neighbours, and do so more than ever to-day; but in view of the present struggle they are merely misleading accidents, and the intolerant spirit that displays itself in threats of armed resistance, or in the “Ulster” of Rudyard Kipling with its:

“The faith in which we stand, The Laws we made and guard, Our honour, lives and land, Are given for reward. To Murder done by night, To Treason taught by day, To folly, sloth and spite, And we are thrust away.”

is more truly characteristic of the historical fairness and temper of that past in which we seek the origin of the problem now confronting the British people. The history of the past dominates minds on both sides of the conflict. Peasants have very long memories, and traditions wrought into every fibre of their being control their outlook on current events in a way quite inexplicable to those who enjoy a wider range of vision and are occupied with modern interests. The horrors of Scullabogue and the heroism of Saintfield are still recounted with vivid detail in the cabins of Wexford and Down; and the relative condition of the two nations in Ireland must be radically altered before the bitter memories of the past and the passions they evoke in the name of religion, will cease to frustrate all movements toward peace and progress. The mention of “two nations” will be eagerly seized by opponents as a fatal objection to the establishment of a native government. And so it would be, if the differences were ineradicable in their nature, or agreement on the principles of government impossible between men of different faith in Ireland; but the past has abundantly proved that neither supposition is true. In every century as men have been uninfluenced by the machinations of party leaders, or freed from clerical control, they have agreed to struggle for the good of their common country. Presbyterians have led “the rebels” in many a bloody fight, the liberties of Ireland were never more gloriously vindicated than in the Protestant Parliament of Grattan, and the latest struggle for legislative independence has found its earliest and most trusted leaders among the Protestant gentry. “More Irish than the Irish themselves,” there have always been found some, yielding to the glamour of Irish climate, character and life, who have forgotten the animosities of religion to combine in prayer and sacrifice for the good of their adopted country. Further, the principles on which the Home Rule demand is based are those professed by men of every creed in the free countries of the world, and in Ireland, too, when men are not blinded by prejudice or traditional fears. The two nations will be welded into one; and “Ireland a nation” will become something more than a patriotic toast, when, for the first time in history, the representatives of all creeds form its Parliament, for Ireland can as ill afford to lose the dour virtues of the Ulster-Scot as of the most dreamy Munster Celt.

The refusal to recognise Irishmen’s right to Nationality, when English, Welsh and Scots are “nations” is a curious relic of the old attitude towards(165) “England’s oldest foe.” They inhabit, at all events, one land, and it is an island. A people variously constituted, they breathe its air, cultivate its soil, speak the same language with even a brogue of their own, enjoy the usual intercourse of ordinary human beings in social, commercial, educational and political pursuits, with common interests, problems, difficulties, and aspirations (_pace_ Ulster). They have a history more ancient than that of Saxon England, and a continuous Christianity as devoutly held for seventeen centuries as in any country of Europe; they have marked characteristics, admirable or otherwise, according to taste and temper, but which the world of art, literature and religion seems to value. But because their ideals do not commend themselves to some thrifty settlers on their lands they are to be denied the status and privileges of a nation.

In any attempt to reach the truth as to the justice and expediency of granting Home Rule to Ireland, it is absolutely futile to waste time in answering the stock arguments of party platforms, special pleading to support a foregone conclusion, half-truths backed up by most remarkable incidents, “fresh in the memory” of the speaker, or invented by his heated imagination. To contradict falsehoods, debate plausible conclusions, or quote instances to the contrary is equally vain, for the distinction between _propter_ and _post hoc_ is often as inscrutable to the ordinary mind in politics as it is in medicine. We must fall back on recognized principles; and leave it to our opponents, on whom the burden lies, to show reason why these should not be applied to Ireland as to other parts of the British Empire, or why Irishmen, because mostly Catholics, are to be refused the natural rights of freemen.

“What in the world do you want?” is the cry indignantly repeated in Belfast conventions, as if it had not been answered a thousand times. Well, once more; it is self-government, so far as that is compatible with the interests of the Empire, to which Ireland belongs and must still belong unless a mighty convulsion of nature puts it elsewhere. It is the right of every civilized and progressive people, the grant of which to its dependencies is the glory of the British Empire, and in preparation for which it governs its subject races in India or Africa. Is Ireland less fit after nine centuries of English government to rule itself on constitutional lines than Canada or the South African Union? Possibly it is; for the centuries have been a weary apprenticeship in misgovernment rather than in constitutional methods; but all the more surely does the long experiment stand condemned, and it may well give place to saner methods. As in personal, so in national life, the sole condition of mature development is responsibility. The father or ruler who jealously denies it to one come to years of discretion is a bungler or a tyrant, ignorant of the first principles of education. For all these centuries the Irish race has been in leading strings; and those most guilty of multiplying and tightening the bonds are naturally the enemies of its independence and of the only method ever discovered by God or man to secure the growth of virtue, the acquisition of strength, or the fulfilment of personal and national promise. Experience is the best, the only, teacher of practical politics; and the mistakes and losses in life incurred by folly or ignorance are our best discipline. To charge a people with incapacity who have never been trusted with power is the resort of stupid malice. Irishmen have vindicated before the world their fitness to fight its battles, or command its armies; as captains of industry they have led in every land, and the British Empire above all is indebted to the statesmen, proconsuls, travellers, scholars and divines that have issued from the race. What a people to be denied the elementary rights of self-government! If Unionists are sincere in deploring the absence of a true spirit of citizenship in the Irish, what have they ever done to encourage it? Sympathy with men’s difficulties, appreciation of their virtues, co-operation in their efforts, Christian charity and trust—these, and not suspicion, distrust, misrepresentation and opposition, should have been the Protestant contribution to the growth and happiness of a people, whom in private life they themselves always admit to be generous friends and neighbours.

Self-government must be based on representation, and the right of majorities. Recognized universally in the Empire, this simple dictate of justice is to be denied to Irishmen in their own land, because the great majority is Roman Catholic. “It is not constitutional” said Gladstone in 1886, “to refuse the demand of five-sixths of the duly elected representatives of a country”; and ever since then the representation has never changed nor has the demand abated. That it is resisted in the name of Religion, not Politics, we are not allowed for one moment to forget; and no one in Protestant circles is unfamiliar with the assertion, how ardently Home Rule would be welcomed if it were not for the Priest in politics and the dread of “Rome Rule.” But let it be recognized that under free institutions it is the right of the majority to rule, irrespective of their religious creed; and that to deny that right in Ireland is to establish a tyranny of the minority—an oligarchy in these days of Democracy! Nothing can exceed the sincerity of men, good but blinded by prejudice, when on Belfast platforms they declare their desire for equality and hatred of ascendency. But what a ludicrous fallacy they fall into when with the same breath they assert their resolve never to submit to the Government of the great majority of their fellow countrymen. In other words they, a small minority, contend for a union with the Parliament of another country for this express purpose, that by the aid of its votes they may override the unanimous wish of three-fourths of the people of their own land. This is the very gist of the Anti-Home Rule demonstration in Belfast on April 9th. It was not Irish in any true sense. The platforms crowded with sixty members of Parliament representing British Constituencies, presided over by noblemen such as a Grand Master of Orangemen and a great coal owner who has practically ceased to be an Irish landowner, addressed by eminent counsel who have transferred their services to the English bar for reasons best known to themselves, ex-ministers and aspirants to office in a Unionist administration—it was a brave show of party political force; but nothing can hide or minimize the fact that it is all avowedly an effort to support and intensify the claim of about half the population of Ulster, and one-fourth of the population of Ireland, to resist and overthrow the rights of Irishmen to the privileges of representative government. If the Unionists of Ireland sincerely desire equality and disavow ascendency in their own country, let them prove it by being willing to accept the conditions of life and legislation naturally imposed by the will of a majority, in the discussion of which they will possess and exercise a fair, or according to their ability, a preponderating degree of influence. But let them cease to demand in their country the predominance of social, political and religious ideals, natural perhaps to England and Scotland now, but alien to Ireland, and secured only by foreign, that is non-Irish, votes.

The representation of minorities on a complete system of proportional voting is an absolute necessity in Ireland. Considering the number of the population, there is very marked and wide-spread variety of opinion. The Orangemen of the cities are often democratic Radicals, however much evil associations may at times corrupt their good manners; Catholic Irishmen, even the clergy (notwithstanding the _semper eadem_ cry), are sharply divided by lines of severance that will appear when the present unnatural combinations pass out of sight, Unionist and Nationalist becoming meaningless; Nonconformists here, as elsewhere, differ from Episcopalians on important subjects; Molly Maguires, Sinn Feiners, Gaelic Leaguers have something to say as regards Irish life worth hearing; and all must find a voice in any true representation of the country’s thought and purpose. The United Kingdom, too, probably needs such a reform in representation, and cannot do better than witness the trial of the experiment on the political body of the sister island.

It is on such fundamental principles of government the argument for Home Rule stands, and Liberalism at all events would be untrue to its very genius in hesitating to confer the boon. Irish Home Rule has been the touchstone of Liberalism, and it is not by any accident that Unionists, who abandoned their old creed to refuse Ireland’s plea, became arrant Tories, and have ceased to exist as a political party.

The objections made by Protestants are formidable and specious. They appeal to passion rather than to reason; they exploit religion in opposition to Christianity; they ignore history and flourish on journalism; they forget humanity’s claims in their zeal for sectional interests.

The stock argument in Belfast appears to be that in the interests of “Empire” Home Rule is impossible. Yet Ireland was under the British Crown when 42,000 volunteers were enrolled under Lord Charlemont and the Duke of Leinster to protect her shores from foreign foes; the stigma of the word “Separatist” has been repudiated by every responsible Irish statesman; and so long as Britain’s naval and military power lasts, the secession of 4 millions of people within one hour’s sail is an absolute impossibility, should any one desire “the dismemberment of the Empire.” Let candid Englishmen consider a simple question; which is the more likely and the more intimidating, menace to the Empire: a discontented, disloyal and impoverished Ireland, or one proud in its self-dependence, grateful to its benefactor, and united by every consideration of mutual protection and benefit? Or which will be of most credit to Britain in the estimation of her Colonies and of the civilized world?

Timid Ulstermen deplore “the loss of their birthright in the Empire”; their civil and religious liberties, they say, are imperilled, their commercial prosperity is sure to suffer. It is hard even to imagine the conception they have formed of their countrymen. Is it as fools or rogues, slaves or tyrants, they wish to caricature the inhabitants of the land, in which they so reluctantly dwell, for the delectation of ignorant foreigners? For none other can be imposed on by such diatribes. Are Irishmen engaged in a struggle for 150 years to gain independence and the rights of men, to signalize their victory by denying civil and religious liberty to their fellows; or are a people whose own industries have been ruined in the past by legal restraints on trade, whose enterprise and efforts to establish new industries and foster old ones are being rewarded with a few gleams of prosperity, dull or wicked enough to wish to injure commercial or manufacturing triumphs in the north of which they are proud? Ask the commercial travellers from Ulster, who enter every town in Ireland, whether their wares are scouted and themselves insulted because of Orange bluff or threats. No! Irishmen are neither fools nor bigots.

The ordinary method of producing prejudice on these topics is to recount the crimes and outrages that have darkened the past of Irish agrarian life. No one can deny their existence, or palliate their enormity. They were the inevitable incidents of war; one of the most bitter ever waged over such a period of years. It was a war of rebellion against misgovernment, of revenge for political crimes, a frantic struggle for life and home on the part of a peasantry down-trodden, ejected, starved; it was the last and successful phase of a great agrarian movement to secure the rights of free born men in the land they tilled. Many crimes have been committed, but who can distribute the blame? and any fair historian will recollect the exasperation under which they were committed, the failure of every attempt at redress, the findings of Royal Commissions disregarded and the promises of politicians forgotten, the evictions and legalized tyranny of rack-renting landlords, and the steady decrease of this violence as constitutional agitation has gained a hearing and a more humane spirit has inspired Parliamentary action. But such crimes as were committed were never acts of religious persecution or violations of the civil liberties of Protestants as such. Roman Catholics who opposed the national movement, or sided with the party accountable for the wrong, suffered also; and it is absolutely unjust and unhistorical to quote the violence of an angry and a maddened people as prophetic, or even suggestive, of similar wrongs likely to be perpetrated under an Irish Government. If the Irish Roman Catholics desired to persecute Protestants, there has been plenty of opportunity to do so; and, in three-fourths of the country, life could have been made intolerable and impossible to farmers and merchants dependent on the goodwill of their neighbours. Yet a universal testimony to the contrary is borne by Protestants of every class and party in the middle and southern counties where Romanism is predominant. The charges of intolerance freely levelled at the Protestant of the north in connection with certain notorious incidents of the political campaign have been repelled and, it was supposed, answered by reference to the boycotting outrages of the land struggle; but what unprejudiced critic would ever admit that such incidents could be paralleled with, or afford any justification for, the petty tyranny to which men have been subjected in Ulster, because they dared to differ in opinion from the majority and to utter the expression of their deliberate convictions?

One of the most curious arguments relied on now against Home Rule, is the prosperity of Ireland under the Union. It used to be Ireland’s miserable poverty and thriftlessness that were assigned as proof of its unfitness for self-government; now the blessed effects of the self same Union have produced such prosperity that self-government is not needed or even wanted!

A daring orator in Belfast proclaimed “the independent Parliament of Ireland a dismal failure, and the Imperial Parliament a distinct success.” The improved condition of Ireland is a matter of deep gratification, specially as a foretaste of a better future. But to boast of the prosperity of a country with its population reduced by one-half in fifty years, with its poor little agricultural holdings of a £10 valuation extending to one-half of the total, its sodden fields and ill-drained lands, its treeless hills and undeveloped mineral resources, its famished peasants and shoeless children carrying sods of peat to the village school, is a heartless jibe emanating from the wealthy capital of the North. The “distinct success” of a century of so-called Union government is an equally audacious flight of fancy. Most people would wish to find a contented people, living under the ordinary laws of constitutional government, advancing industries, growing population, and plentiful food as the tokens of a distinct success under a government of ever-increasing wealth and power: but seven famines desolated the land during the century; “for thirty-five years after the Union, Ireland was ruled for three years out of every four by laws giving extraordinary powers to the Government; and in the next fifty years (1835-1885) there were only three without Coercion and Crime Acts.”(166) That for the boasted success of Unionism in Ireland! The present prosperity is due to the National movement, in response to which Gladstone secured the tenant right for the farmer, and disestablished the Church, commencing that long series of beneficent but belated reforms which have inspired the Irish people with hope, and of which the last and crowning gift of independent self-government awaits completion.

To return to the more distinctly religious aspects of the question, though all that means liberty and progress ought to appeal to every Protestant’s warmest sentiments, let us examine briefly the alleged dangers arising from the power of the Roman Catholic priesthood and their influence on a national government. It is ungenerous to forget all but the seamy side of the Priest’s influence in Ireland. In many a dark day he was the poor man’s only champion, and he has won a place of love in the people’s heart not lightly granted or easily lost. But no one familiar with Irish life fails to notice a change in the relations of priest and people whether it be a portent of good or evil. The spread and consolidation of democratic feeling, the many ties between the cabin in Ireland and the children’s home in America, the spread of education and the influence of the Press, are exercising in Ireland, as similar causes do elsewhere, a deep influence on the simple piety, or as some call it, the superstition of the people. The cry “no priest in politics” prevails as never before; and that their sphere of influence in limited to questions of faith and morals is being widely recognized by the clergy themselves. Influences at work in European Catholic countries must more and more reach Ireland, and possibly its danger is not from clericalism but from a slackening hold of the only form of Christianity that has ever won the heart of the people. At all events Roman Catholicism in Ireland has never been an aggressive force forcing its faith on other communions, but seems content to be let alone and to minister to its own adherents unmolested, as it has not been in the past.

When Protestant interests such as education, temperance, Sunday observance, marriage laws, and morals generally, are said to be in imminent danger, what is it that is meant exactly? On such subjects there are interests that are essential, and others that are matters of opinion: very important to those who think them right, but of no weight to others. As to legislation on these questions, if Protestants imagine they have any claim or chance to impose their views in a National Parliament as they have been accustomed to do, or try to do, by aid of English votes at Westminster, the sooner they are disillusioned the better. But if they are satisfied to secure essential interests, such as thoroughness in education, increased sobriety by temperance reform, sanctity for marriage, and liberty for Sunday observance according to the conviction of each, what ground have they to fear that the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy will be cast on the side opposed to their aims? There is a very wonderful ignorance in the mind of the ordinary Protestant as to the attitude of the Catholic clergy on moral and social questions. In temperance, for instance, no Church in Ireland can rival in extent or efficiency the work of the Capuchin Fathers, the Redemptorists, or the Pioneers, an organization formed by a Jesuit priest, and rivalling in thoroughness and success the “Catch-my-Pal” crusade of the Presbyterian Church. In education, too, of every grade the Roman Catholic Church advances with extraordinary zeal. True, there are Protestants who complain of the Roman Catholic opposition to “mixed education”—a palpably unfair complaint, whose underlying motive is a sectarian hope to weaken the hold of religion on the people. There has been nothing like unanimity among the Protestant Churches on the same subject. Each of them has tried its best to secure in the educational sphere its own denominational interests. It was the cry “Hands off Trinity” that killed Mr. Bryce’s University Bill, which would have united the youth of Ireland in one grand university, in which Trinity might have been the proud leader of Irish University education. That legislation on education should be demanded on the lines of a mixed system is quite unreasonable, being a matter of very divided opinion; but as to the keen and successful competition of the Roman Catholic schools and colleges with all the older institutions in the country there is no question among those who know.

As to the moral interests of the community, it is a rather daring assumption that they will be imperilled under a distinctly Nationalist government. The reputation of the Irish race for pre-eminence in the domestic virtues is a well established fact, and no incidents of later years can cast even a passing shadow on the fair fame of her sons and daughters. The standard of religious observance on such a matter as Sunday may be different from that of the Protestant Churches. In practice the latter have not much to boast; and experience gives no reason whatever to fear any interference with the freest pursuit of their religious convictions. The decree _Ne temere_ and cases of the undoubted miscarriage of justice arising from it have created much discussion and distrust as to the validity, under an Irish Parliament, of the marriage bond. The sanctity of that bond in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, to whom it is a Sacrament, cannot be doubted; and if the object of the decree is, as it appears to be, to prevent mixed marriages, it ought to win the approval of many Protestants who strongly condemn such alliances; but it is for the civil law and the Executive of any government to provide that marriages legally celebrated shall be upheld by all the power of the State. And Ireland, according to Mr. Asquith’s Home Rule Bill, has no reason to dread any failure in that duty. As to the decree commonly known as _Motu proprio_, it never has been promulgated, or acted on, in Ireland or elsewhere in the British dominions. It was unearthed, after centuries of existence, by a party newspaper, and exploited for all it was worth, and a great deal more, to embitter anti-Catholic prejudices, and score a point in the Irish discussion.

As to Guarantees, opinion is much divided among Protestants. They are at best a temporary device to allay fear; and can never be a substitute for the real and honourable safeguards to be found in freedom and publicity of discussion, the spread of enlightenment and toleration, the growing spirit of Christian brotherhood and goodwill. The provisions in the Government Bill appear to be ample; but all paper guarantees are easily evaded, and it is on more permanent and spiritual assurances Protestants must rely.

Seldom has Protestantism had a finer chance than she will have in Ireland under self-government, if only, inspired with the spirit of her Master and the love of her native liberty, she seeks not to grasp power, but to render service, if her idea of character be not the “old man” with his haunting memories of wrong done and suffered, but the “new man” of the Gospel, inspired by a fresh enthusiasm for the realisation of the Divine purpose in regenerated human society. No Protestant Church will perhaps ever be the Church of Ireland, as one powerful communion with a touch of the old arrogance claims to be; yet Protestantism may add something to the national piety and progress, nay, she may be another bulwark to the Christian faith in days of strain and stress, if she can exhibit to a naturally religious people a tangible proof of the possibility of uniting the Apostolic creed with the intellectual demands of modern progress, and in this way help to save the youth of Ireland from a desolating materialism. Thus Protestantism may yet be enabled to make some pious reparation for many an unholy deed done in her name to the most generous people under the sun.

FOOTNOTES

1 Professor Dicey in “A Leap in the Dark” (1911), p. 118. _Cf._ Mr. Balfour in _The Times_, May 3rd, 1912.

2 “The Law of Constitution,” Sixth Edition, p. 162, where Professor Dicey makes a rather unhappy attempt to force the Dominion Constitution into the category of Federalism.

3 The opinion of Laband (“Staatsrecht,” I., _passim_) as to its being found in the totality of allied Governments represented by the Bundesrath is probably nearest the truth.

4 Laband, “Die Entwickelung des Bundesraths,” Jahrbuch des oeffentlichen Rechts, 1907, Vol. I., p. 18.

5 Maitland, _Domesday Book and Beyond_, p. 345.

6 It is difficult to understand what Professor Dicey means by saying “unity is increasing throughout the Empire.” His argument seems like a play upon the words unity and union. In merchant shipping, copyright and other such matters, the whole tendency is towards differentiation.

7 There are innumerable cases, _e.g._ _Cruikshank’s case_ and the _Slaughter House case_.

_ 8 Cf._ Mr. Balfour, _The Times_, May 3rd.

_ 9 Cf._ “Pacificus” in _The Times_, April 30th.

10 I refer, of course, to the decisions of the Supreme Court—decisions almost revolutionary in their character—in connection with the annexation of Hawaii, the Philippines and Porto Rico. See in particular _Downes_ v. _Bidwell_, 182 U.S., 244; also _Territory of Hawaii_ v. _Makichi_, 23 S.C. Rep., 787, and _Dorr_ v. _United States_, 195 U.S., 138.

11 It cannot be contended with any show of reason that the grant of a constitution legally carries with it a grant of the Executive power such as to divest the Imperial Government of its authority. There is but a solitary opinion to the opposite effect—that of Higginbottom, C. J. of Victoria, in _Musgrove_ v. _Toy_ (Victorian Law Reports, XIV., 349).

12 The veto of the central Government on the local legislature is the most decisive departure from the Federal principle. The Judicial Committee have always regarded it, in the case of the British North America Act, as a conclusive reason for rejecting the application of the Federal doctrines of the U.S. Courts to the interpretation of the Canadian Constitution. See _infra_, and _cf. Bank of Toronto_ v. _Lambe_, 12 App. Cas., 575.

13 Difficulties arise when, as in the case of the Australian Commonwealth, an attempt is made to reconcile the principles of the American Constitution with those of the English Constitution. The State Governments in Australia, equally with the Federal Government, are carried on in the name of the Crown; what, then, becomes of the prerogative doctrine that the Crown is not bound by a taxing statute, when the Federal Executive attempts to levy Customs duties under a Federal statute upon the property of a State Government? The High Court found itself compelled to distinguish between several capacities of the Crown in a Federal system. See _A-G. of New South Wales_ v. _Collector of Customs_, 5 C.L.R., 818.

_ 14 In re Neagle_, 135 U.S. Rep., p. 1.

_ 15 Cf._ Sir William Anson, in the _Law Quarterly Review_, 1886.

16 There is, however, a provision in Clause XXVI. of the Bill Providing that, in the event of a revision of the financial arrangements being recommended by the Joint Exchequer Board, with a view to securing an Imperial contribution from Irish revenues, and “extending the powers of the Irish Parliament and the Irish Government with respect to the imposition and collection of taxes,” there shall be summoned to the Imperial Parliament such number of members of the _Irish_ House of Commons as will raise the representation of Ireland in that Parliament from its reduced figure of forty-two to such a number (say seventy) as will represent Ireland’s claim to representation on a population basis. That is to say, the Irish Parliament will send some twenty-eight of its members to reinforce the forty-two members who are directly elected to the Imperial Parliament by the constituencies. It is only proper that Ireland should not be required to contribute to Imperial purposes except with the consent of the full representation to which she is entitled. But the clause will require more careful definition: for example, the Irish Parliament ought to be required to choose these twenty-eight delegates in proportion to the representation of Irish parties in the Imperial Parliament, so as not to “pack” the delegation. It can hardly be denied that the provision makes a change in the constitution of the Imperial Parliament itself, and a somewhat anomalous one. It ought to be carefully considered in Committee. So, also, ought the powers of the Joint Exchequer Board, whose decisions are to be “final and conclusive.”

17 Clause XLI.

18 Clause XLI. (2).

19 The power of the Dominion Parliament to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Canada has, however, been so interpreted as to permit of a large degree of concurrent legislation. See _Russell_ v. _The Queen_, 7 App. Cas. 829. The Dominion Government can also exercise a veto on provincial legislation when it runs counter to the “settled policy” of the Dominion. But in these respects the Canadian Constitution diverges from the true Federal type.

_ 20 The King_ v. _Barger_, Commonwealth Law Reports, VI., p. 41.

_ 21 Riel_ v. _The Queen_, 10 App. Cas. 675.

22 Cf. _Reg._ v. _Burah_, 3 App. Cas. 889; _Hodge_ v. _The Queen_, 9 App. Cas. 117; _Powell_ v. _The Apollo Candle Company_, 10 App. Cas. 282.

23 The Imperial Parliament can, of course, legislate for any part of the world (_Cf._ _Earl Russell’s_ Case, 1901, App. Cas. 446), but its power is limited in practice.

_ 24 Cf._ _Bank of Toronto_ v. _Lambe_, 12 App. Cas. 575.

25 In _McCulloch_ v. _Maryland_, 4 Wheaton 316.

26 I am concerned here only with the justification for the omission of constitutional restrictions. The Bill, as compared with its predecessors, is conspicuous in this respect. Such restrictions as it actually contains are dealt with by Sir John Macdonell in Chapter IV.

27 Let me cite in illustration _Tilonko_ v. _The Attorney-General of Natal_, L.R. (1907), A.C. 93 and 461, and _Philips_ v. _Eyre_ (1869), Q.B.

_ 28 Walker_ v. _Sauvinet_, 92 U.S. 90.

_ 29 Cf._ Clause IV. (8) of the 1893 Bill.

30 Such legislation must affect alike all persons similarly situated, _cf._ _Yick Wo_ v. _Hopkins_, 118 U.S. 356.

_ 31 Cf._ on this subject the decision of the Judicial Committee in _Union Colliery Co. of British Columbia_ v. _Bryden_ (1899) A.C. 580.

32 “Towards a Social Policy” (1905).

33 For example, the statutory limitations of the doctrine of common employment which was based on the common law doctrine that the workman had freely contracted to undertake the risks of his employment.

34 Mr. Justice O. W. Holmes, of the Supreme Court of the United States, writes to me on the subject of constitutional restrictions as follows: “The police power is a ’conciliatory phrase’ to cover the fact that if the infringement is not very big it will be sustained. The police power would warrant a State law limiting the height of buildings in a certain region to, say, 70 feet; but if you limited them to 5 feet you would have to fall back on Eminent Domain and pay for it—so that the beginning of constitutional rights may be measured in feet. In other words, constitutional restrictions cannot be carried to extremes, but end in a penumbra.”

35 The best example of this liberalising interpretation of the police power is the famous _Slaughter House Case_ (16 Wall. 36). _Cf._ as to regulation of the liquor trade _Barbemeyer_ v. _Iowa_ (18 Wall. 129), and _Mayler_ v. _Kansas_ (123 U.S. 623). For a general review of cases bearing on the restrictive words of the Fourteenth Amendment and their qualification by the necessity of allowing State Legislatures the benefit of the police power, see the case of the Utah Miners Act, 18 Supreme Court Reporter 383.

_ 36 Cf._ the leading case of _Metropolitan Asylums Board_ v. _Hill_ and _cf._ _Partington_ v. _The Attorney-General_, L.R. 4 H.L. 122.

37 The decisions of the Supreme Court at Washington in the annexation cases are a remarkable example of this. Their decision in the case of _Dorr_ v. _United States_ that trial by jury did not extend to the Philippines, on the ground that it was not a right fundamental in its nature, set up a distinction which is not to be found in the Constitution itself, and therefore left it to the court to decide principles of constitutional law which are unwritten. _Cf. Harvard Law Review XIX._ 547.

38 As to the safeguard against legislation affecting the rights of religious minorities and to laws of marriage, see Sir John Macdonell’s remarks in Chapter IV. _infra_.

_ 39 Cf. Philips __v.__ Eyre_ _supra_.

40 This would apply to the Tenure of Office Act.

41 The mere fact that the Crown had given its consent to an Irish Act would not make that Act _intra vires_ if it exceeded the powers of the Irish Legislature. It might subsequently be declared _ultra vires_ by a Court at any time.

42 I am not at all sure that this provision was necessary. The Crown already has the power under 3 & 4 Will. IV. cap 41, sec. 4 to refer to the Judicial Committee any such matters whatsoever as it may think fit. The Canadian Government has a similar power conferred on it by the Supreme Court Act, 1875, extended by 54 & 55 Vict., enabling the Governor-General in Council to refer to the Supreme Court certain specified matters, particularly questions touching the validity of provincial or Dominion legislation. The decision of the court operates as a declaratory judgment, on which an appeal may be taken to the Judicial Committee. For example of its exercise _cf._ the Manitoba Schools Case. See Sir Frederick Pollock’s remarks in