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“I’d give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again.”

The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone’s policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase. It is the old story of the Sibyl’s books. No British Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone. On the other hand, Home Rule is inevitable. Can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year? Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution. If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question of who shall control the police will arise. In Great Britain the police, of course, will be under local control. To refuse this to Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. The Irish members agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr. Gladstone’s scheme, for some years in the hands of the British Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country. Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government for Ireland. The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone’s Bill.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain’s scheme was submitted.]

[Footnote 16: Hansard, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.]

[Footnote 17: Considerations on Representative Government, p. 281.]

[Footnote 18: Dicey’s England’s Case against Home Rule, pp. 25-31, and Letter in Spectator of September 17th, 1887.]

[Footnote 19: From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin–namely, Duke of Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F. Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr. W.H. Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour. A fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!]

[Footnote 20: Creasy’s Imperial and Colonial Constitutions of the Britannic Empire, p. 155.]

[Footnote 21: May’s Const. Hist., i. 313.]

[Footnote 22: Blackstone’s Commentaries, by Stephen, ii. 491, 492, 497, 507.]

[Footnote 23: We need not go far afield for illustrations. A few samples will suffice. “It was natural,” says Mill ( Rep. Gov., p. 311), “to feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the Supreme Court of the United States] would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the Government would consent peaceably to its decision. The discussions on the American Constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the Federal and State Governments.” The Austrian opponents of Home Rule in Hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. The opponents of the Canadian Constitution prophesied that Canada would in a few years be annexed to the United States; and Home Rule in Australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date. Mr. Dicey himself tells us “that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain. There were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be without foundation.” The various changes in our own Constitution, and even in our Criminal Code, were believed by “men of light and leading” at the time to portend national ruin. All the judges in the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. The great Lord Ellenborough declared in the House of Lords that “the learned judges were unanimously agreed” that any mitigation in that law would imperil “the public security.” “My Lords,” he exclaimed, “if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet.” Mr. Perceval, when leader of the House of Commons in 1807, declared that “he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances which would render further concessions to the Catholics consistent with the safety of the State.” ( Croker Papers, i. 12.) Croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast of the Reform Act of 1832: “No kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and persecutions.” “There can be no longer any doubt that the Reform Bill is a stepping-stone in England to a Republic, and in Ireland to separation.” Croker met the Queen in 1832, considered her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that “she may live to be plain Miss Guelph.” Even Sir Robert Peel wrote: “If I am to be believed, I foresee revolution as the consequence of this Bill;” and he “felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the Crown.” And as late as 1839, so robust a character as Sir James Graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young Queen gave her confidence to a Whig Minister. “I begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings,” he writes to Croker, “with regard to the probable issue of the present struggle. The Crown in alliance with Democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our mixed form of Government. Aristocracy and Church cannot contend against Queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance, when the Crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course.” And he prays that he may “lie cold before that dreadful day.” ( Ibid., ii. 113, 140, 176, 181, 356.) Free Trade created a similar panic. “Good God!” Croker exclaimed, “what a chaos of anarchy and misery do I foresee in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing an average duty of 8 s. into a fixed duty of 8 s., the fact being that the fixed duty means no duty at all ; and no duty at all will be the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our country!” ( Ibid., iii. 13.) And what have become of Mr. Lowe’s gloomy vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate Reform Bill of 1866, followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?]