back to the
increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the
electors of Midlothian, and in his Midlothian speeches; I say, when I
consider all these things, I feel that I have not, and that no one has,
any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which Mr.
Gladstone has recently made upon this subject."

So much as to the state of Liberal opinion on the Irish question at the
General Election of 1885. The leaders of all sections of the party put
the Irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session
of 1886. We all remember Sir Charles Dilke's public announcement that he
and Mr. Chamberlain were going to visit Ireland in the autumn of 1885,
to study the Irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan
for the first session of the new Parliament.

What about the Conservative party? Lord Salisbury's Newport speech was
avowedly the programme of his Cabinet. It was the Conservative answer to
Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian manifesto. He dealt with the Irish question
in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he
recognized, not less clearly than the Liberal leaders, the crucial
change which the assimilation of the Irish franchise to that of Great
Britain had wrought in Irish policy. His keen eye saw at once the
important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional
policy of coercion: "You had passed an Act of Parliament, giving in
unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the
great mass of the Irish people--supreme power as regards their own
locality.... To my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a
population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence
was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope,
during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the
present Parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on
one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation
had so strongly emphasized. The only result of your doing it would have
been, not that you would have passed the Act, but that you would have
promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were
occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were
advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst
the Irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten
times more resistance to law than your Crimes Act, even if it had been
renewed, would possibly have been able to check." Lord Salisbury went on
to say that "the effect of the Crimes Act had been very much
exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which
legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "Boycotting does not
operate through outrage. Boycotting is the act of a large majority of a
community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal,
and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done."

Next to Lord Salisbury the most prominent member of the Conservative
party at that date was Lord Randolph Churchill. On the 3rd of January,
1885, when it was rumoured that Mr. Gladstone's Government, then in
office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the Crimes Act, Lord
Randolph Churchill made a speech at Bow against any such policy. The
following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "It comes
to this, that the policy of the Government in Ireland is to declare on
the one hand, by the passing of the Reform Bill, that the Irish people
are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the Empire the
highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to
renew the Crimes Act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand,
that the Irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the
advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of
citizenship.... All I can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a
ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be
called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no
policy."

Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative
Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in
the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to
separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer
and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as
the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in
scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord
Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that
"the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government
intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in
addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview
with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord
Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some
form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."

It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for
Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise
by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought
prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one
that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to
that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits
of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it
was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord
Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or
whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the
control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that
the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated
equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was
to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people
had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for
self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a
recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation
necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question
of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives
and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to
the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government
had been tried. Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the
necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of
profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a
fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.

Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in
1886. They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we
behold? They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the
question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an
uncertain future. In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr.
Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and
that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England
successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government
for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take
precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish
Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this
change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from
there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been
a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent
last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many
years past. Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy
of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of
conciliation. The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when
the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent,
and outrages were much more numerous.

Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its
advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. They defeated Mr.
Gladstone's Bill, but promised a Bill of their own. Where is their Bill?
We hear nothing of it. They have made a complete change of front. They
now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that
the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual
ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing
law. England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local
government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient
season. A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by
the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.

Still, however, the "Unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some
form of self-government to Ireland. For party purposes they are wise in
postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will
probably dissolve the union of the "Unionists." Lord Salisbury, Lord
Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme
which all can accept without a public recantation of previous
professions. Mr. Bright is opposed to Home Rule "in any shape or form."
Mr. Chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great National
Council, on Mr. Butt's lines or on the lines of the Canadian plan;
either of which would give the National Council control over education
and the maintenance of law and order. Latterly, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain
has advocated a separate treatment for Ulster. But the first act of an
Ulster Provincial Assembly would probably be to declare the union of
that Province with the rest of Ireland. Ulster, be it remembered,
returns a majority of Nationalists to the Imperial Parliament. To
exclude Ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other
three Provinces would therefore be impracticable; and Mr. Bright has
lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. In any case,
Lord Hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as Mr.
Chamberlain's. For although he declared, in his Belfast speech, that
"complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for Ireland, he
was careful to explain that "the extension of Irish management over
Irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." But this "growth
from small beginnings" would be, in Lord Salisbury's opinion, a very
dangerous and mischievous policy. The establishment of self-government
in Ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as Home Rule, he
pronounced in his Newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and
in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the
difficulty:--"A local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and
has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the
minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and
extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. That is one of the weaknesses
of local authorities. In a large central authority the wisdom of several
parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. In a
local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and
it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of
any such local authority to Ireland."

This seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system
of elective boards scattered broadcast over Ireland. A multitude of
local boards all over Ireland, without a recognized central authority to
control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of
the emissaries of disorder and sedition. And, even apart from any such
sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the
temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were
no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience.
Without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be
sheer madness to offer Ireland the fatal boon of local self-government.
It would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the
Nationalists, and would make the administration of Ireland by
constitutional means simply impossible. The policy of the Liberal
Unionists is thus much too large or much too small. It is too small to
conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. All these
proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would
each and all enable the Irish to extort Home Rule, but under
circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. Mill
has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and I venture
to quote the following passage: "The greatest imperfection of popular
local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often
attends