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How We Became Home Rulers
by
SESSION OF 1883.–Three facts stood out in the history of this comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the road we had entered.
One was the omission of Parliament to complete the work begun by the Land Bill of 1881, of improving the condition of the Irish peasantry and reorganizing Irish administration. The Nationalist members brought in Bills for these purposes, including one for amending the Land Act by admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents. Though we could not approve all the contents of these Bills, we desired to see the Government either take them up and amend them, or introduce Bills of its own to do what was needed. Some of us spoke strongly in this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. Sound policy called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of 1881. The Government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that Ireland could not have all the time of Parliament, but must let England and Scotland have their turn. Nor was anything done towards the creation of new local institutions in Ireland, or the reform of the Castle bureaucracy. We were profoundly disheartened. We saw golden opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether Westminster was the place in which to legislate for Irish grievances.
Another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of Nationalist members. Every seat that fell vacant in Ireland was filled by them. The moderate Irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed the floor of the House, and were sitting among us, had evidently no future. They were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we had hoped much, as a link between the Liberal party and the Irish people. But they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were they able to give us much practical counsel as to Irish problems. It was clear that they would vanish at the next General Election, and Parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank.
Lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the Nationalists and the Tory Opposition became a potent factor in politics. Its first conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another, combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our Parliamentary system.
Session of 1884.–I pass over the minor incidents of this year, including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced, owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country, a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill was introduced the question at once arose–Should Ireland be included?
There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to choose.
One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation, such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power which the inhabitants of Britain might receive.