FullReads

“If the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in this void of the Irish people’s heart, seem to us irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence, even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling and affection more than ourselves.”[50]

And all this was written sixty-seven years after the Union of 1800.

Mr. Goldwin Smith then deals with the subject of the Irish and Scotch unions much in the same way as Mr. Lecky.

“The incorporation of the Scotch nation with the English, being conducted on the right principles by the great Whig statesman of Anne, has been perfectly successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish nation with the English and Scotch, the success of which would have been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed. What might have been the result if even the Hanoverian sovereigns had done the personal duty to their Irish kingdom which they have unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. The Irish Union has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again. We may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in Russian and Austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations one, especially when they are divided by the sea. Once get rid of this deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the future.”[51]

Mr. Goldwin Smith finally proposes a “plan” by which the “deadly international hatred” might be got rid of, and a “real union” brought about. Here it is.

“1. The residence of the Court at Dublin, not merely to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure the Irish people, in the only way possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the United Kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. This would also tend to make Dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion of the Irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere.

“2. An occasional session (say once in every three years) of the Imperial Parliament in Dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last proposal, but also because the circumstances of Ireland are likely to be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient security for good Irish legislation. There could be no serious difficulty in holding a short session in the Irish capital, where there is plenty of accommodation for both Houses.

“3. A liberal measure of local self-government for Ireland. I would not vest the power in any single assembly for all Ireland, because Ulster is really a different country from the other provinces. I would give each province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate (subject, of course, to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament) on all matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in which I would include local education. The provincial councils should of course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as that of electors to the Imperial Parliament. In England itself the extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular districts, would, I think, have formed a part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. Here, also, much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business, together with such other matters as the central legislative might think fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county.”[52]