Читать книгу Against Home Rule (1912) - Various - Страница 28

A proposal to give to Ireland full "responsible" government, without any other limitations than such as are imposed on our self-governing Colonies, would find few supporters in this country. Under such a constitution an Irish Government would have power to forbid or restrict recruiting for the Imperial forces in Ireland, and to raise and train a force of its own. It might establish or subsidise a religion, make education wholly denominational, levy customs duties on imports from Great Britain and give fiscal advantages to a foreign power, confiscate or transfer property without payment, and deprive individuals of nationality, franchise, liberty, or life without process of law. However improbable some of these contingencies may appear, it is right on a matter of so much moment to consider possibilities and not probabilities only. Such powers as these could not without serious risk be conceded to any part of the kingdom, and in the case of Ireland there would be a special danger in granting them to a popularly elected body.

In the first place, the national safety would be involved. Englishmen were at one time too fond of saying that the great Colonies might, if they chose, sever the link which binds them to the Mother Country. Happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. But it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many Irishmen national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. If the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at whatever interval) by an assertion of complete independence, we may assume that Great Britain would follow the example of Federal America and re-establish the Union by force of arms, but at how great a cost! Those who deny the possibility of a serious movement towards separation would do well to remember Mr. Gladstone's reference[28] to the position of Norway and Sweden, then united under one crown:—

"Let us look to those two countries, neither of them very large, but yet countries which every Englishman and every Scotchman must rejoice to claim his kin—I mean the Scandinavian countries of Sweden and Norway. Immediately after the great war the Norwegians were ready to take sword in hand to prevent their coming under the domination of Sweden. But the Powers of Europe undertook the settlement of that question, and they united those countries upon a footing of strict legislative independence and co-equality. … And yet with two countries so united, what has been the effect? Not discord, not convulsions, not danger to peace, not hatred, not aversion, but a constantly growing sympathy; and every man who knows their condition knows that I speak the truth when I say that in every year that passes the Norwegians and the Swedes are more and more feeling themselves to be the children of a common country, united by a tie which never is to be broken."

The tie was broken within twenty years.

It may be that the Nationalist leaders, or some of them, do not desire separation; but it by no means follows that a concession of their demands would not lead to that result. Franklin, in 1774, had an interview with Chatham, in which he says—

"I assured him that, having more than once travelled almost from one end of the continent (of America) to the other, and kept a great variety of company, eating, drinking, and conversing with them freely, I never had heard in any conversation from any person, drunk or sober, the least expression of a wish for a separation, or a hint that such a thing would be advantageous to America."[29]

And yet independence came within ten years.

In the case of the United Kingdom there is no need to consider in detail how serious would be the effects—naval, military, and economic—of separation, for the gravity of such a contingency is admitted by all. Admiral Mahan, the American naval expert, writes that—

"the ambition of the Irish separatists, realised, might be even more threatening to the national life of Great Britain than the secession of the South was to that of the American Union. … The instrument for such action in the shape of an independent Parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends."

Some Home Rulers are able to—

"rise superior to the philosophy, as fallacious in fact as it is base and cowardly in purpose, which sets the safety of a great nation above the happiness and prosperity of a small one,"[30]

but to less lofty souls it appears that the safety of the nation is paramount, and that upon it depends the prosperity of each of its component parts.

In the next place, in considering whether complete "colonial" self-government can be conceded to Ireland, it must not be forgotten that the island is bi-racial, that the two races differ widely in character, in politics, and in religion, and that the differences are apt to find vent in violent conflict or secret attacks. Further, Ireland has for generations been the scene of a revolt against one particular species of property, the ownership of land; and although under the operation of the Land Purchase Acts this cause of conflict tends to abate, it still breaks out from time to time in the form of cattle drives and attacks on "land grabbers."[31] Hitherto we have, broadly speaking, kept the peace. That we should now forsake this duty, and, washing our hands of Ireland, leave the Protestant and the landowner, at or small, to his fate is unthinkable.

In connection with the question last-mentioned it may be necessary at some time to consider how far it is the constitutional right of this country to impose upon the minority in Ireland the new obligations implied in a grant to the whole island of colonial Home Rule. It may be that the Imperial Parliament can disallow the claim of a section of the population of Ireland to remain subject to its own control. But it is one thing to reject the allegiance of a community, it is quite another thing forcibly to transfer that allegiance to a practically independent legislature; and this is especially the case when the transfer may involve the use against a loyal population of coercion in its extreme form.