III. FROM IRISH HISTORY.

Appeals to the lessons of the past are too often but a mischievous stirring up of ancient passions. Yet there is no doubt that the history of Ireland affords both telling and lawful arguments on the side of the Home Rulers.

16. CONTINUOUS RECORD OF FAILURE AND MISERY.

On one point alone, they may fairly say, all who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are agreed. The history of the country is a record of incessant failure on the part of the Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. As to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do differ; but of the facts there can be no doubt. Every scheme has been tried in turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even produced its natural effects. Oppression of the Catholics has multiplied the adherents and strengthened the hold of Catholicism. Protestant supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to Protestant contentment; and the one successful act of resistance to English dominion was effected by a Protestant Parliament, supported by an army of Volunteers led by a body of Protestant officers. The independence gained by a Protestant Parliament led after eighteen years to a rebellion so reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the destruction of the Parliament and the carrying of the Union. The Act of Union did not lead to National Unity; and a measure which appeared (though it must be owned it only appeared) on the face of it to be a copy of the law which turned England and Scotland into a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and has at last placed England and Ireland further apart morally than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of Union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation, instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for Repeal. The Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion of 1848. Suppressed rebellion begat Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. It is said, and truly said, that the movement relies upon constitutional methods for obtaining

redress; but constitutional methods are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite.

17. HENCE IRISH DISAFFECTION TO LAW.

No doubt each of the failures in this long record of guilt and disaster, like all other calamities, whether in public or in private life, may be explained; but failure is not the less failure because it admits of explanation, and the failure of English statesmanship in Ireland has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can produce. It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland, because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the action of the Courts, are in Ireland, even when not themselves law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers. The Home Ruler may admit that the errors of British policy have not arisen from ill-will to the Irish 'people. All the more strongly, he will say, do they prove that it is impossible for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to understand or to provide for Irish needs. The law, he urges, is hated in Ireland not because it is unjust, but because it is English. The reason, he says, why judges, soldiers, or policemen strive in vain to cope with lawlessness is that they are in fact trying to enforce not so much the rule of justice as the supremacy of England. The Austrian administration in Lombardy was never deemed to be bad; the Austrian rule was hated, not because the Austrians were bad rulers, but because they were foreigners. We are told upon high authority that the law in Ireland comes before the people in a "foreign garb." In Ireland, as in Lombardy, say the Home Rulers, permanent discontent is caused by the outraged sentiment of nationality. Miseries which flow historically from political causes are to be met, they say, by political changes. Give Ireland an independent Parliament, say the Home Rulers; let Ireland manage her own affairs, and England will be freed from a task which she`ought never to have taken up, because she cannot perform it, while you will lay upon Ireland duties which she can perform, but which she has never yet been either allowed or compelled to take up.

18. REAL LESSONS OF IRISH HISTORY.

This argument undoubtedly contains a large amount of truth, and is supported by high authority. To meet it fairly we must

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survey the broad phenomena of Irish history, and consider what are the inferences which they really warrant. We must dismiss from our minds the notion, naturally fostered by common modes of speech, that England and Ireland are two persons individually and permanently responsible for the crimes and follies of past ages. We must be on our guard against taking it for granted that when anything goes wrong in national affairs there is always some man or men upon whom the blame can be fixed, as a murderer may be held guilty of murder, or a robber of theft.

We should also remember that the most useful result of the study of history is to tone down those historical enmities whose bitterness is partly caused by forgetfulness of the fact that we cannot justly judge the conduct of actors in bygone scenes by a moral standard which was not theirs. The moral function of an historian is to lessen the hatreds which divide nation from nation and class from class, and which at the present moment are doing more to prevent real unity between the inhabitants of the two islands making up the United Kingdom than do unjust laws or vicious institutions.

19. DIFFERENT LEVELS AND TENDENCIES OF ENGLAND AND

IRELAND.

The first fact which thrusts itself upon our attention is, that England and Ireland have from the first been standing on different levels of civilisation, and have moreover tended towards a different kind of development. Englishmen seldom understand how singular has been the growth of English institutions. They do not perceive that the gradual transformation of an aristocratic and feudal society into a modern industrial State, while retaining the forms and much of the spirit of feudalism, is a process which has hardly a parallel in any other European country, and which has owed its success in England to most peculiar circumstances. Ireland, on the other hand, in spite of the deviations from her natural course caused by her connection with a powerful nation, has tended to follow the lines of progress pursued by Continental countries, and notably by France. A Frenchman like De Beaumont can understand many things in Ireland which puzzle an Englishman; such, for example, as the passion of Irish peasants for the possession of land. To a foreign observer, what needs explanation is the social condition of England, rather than that of Ireland. He can see at a glance that

the radical and permanent cause of Irish misery has been the plantation in Ireland of an aristocracy and of aristocratic institutions (especially the Land Laws) foreign to the traditions and opposed to the interests of the mass of the people.

20. FOUR RESULTING SOURCES OF TROUBLE.

From the disparity between the different levels and the opposite tendencies of civilisation in England and Ireland, have flowed four chief sources of our present troubles.

(a) Unsuitable Parliamentary Institutions.

First, the system of Parliamentary government, which to England has proved so beneficial, has been ill-adapted to the needs of Treland, and this for two chief reasons. It has meant in England, government by parties, the result of which is, that, Ireland at every turn has been sacrificed to party aims; and it has rendered efficient administration very difficult, a matter of more importance than is easily understood without some reference to Continental practices. Our English way of managing our local affairs is at any rate quite unsuited to a country harassed by religious and social feuds, and where the owners of the land are not, and cannot be, the trusted guides of the people.

In some respects the very virtues of Englishmen have hindered them from winning the good-will of the Irish. Our great gifts for government are combined (as we see elsewhere) with a singular incapacity for combining subject races into one State. This arises from our respect for privilege, or (what is the same thing) our indifference to equality-which, however, to most men seems a form of justice. France has shown a power, quite unknown to Englishmen, of attaching to herself, by affection, countries which she has annexed by force. The explanation is not far to seek. Every country annexed by France is governed (whether well or ill) on the same principles as the rest of the French dominions. Every French Assembly since the Revolution has included deputies from the Colonies. No Colony has ever sent a deputy to Westminster.

(b) Artificial Suppression of Revolution.

Secondly, the English connection has brought upon Ireland the evils belonging to the artificial suppression of revolutions. With

no fault on either side, this desperate cure for deep-seated disorders has been rendered impossible by the position occupied by Great Britain, and revolution has been suppressed at the price of permanent disorganisation.

(c) Religious Oppression.

Thirdly, the policy of religious oppression, natural and inevitable in its time, has produced more evil in Ireland than in any other European country. It was to each country a grievous misfortune that England should have been ripe for Protestantism when Ireland could hardly even understand it.

(d) Unjust System of Land Tenure.

Fourthly and this is the main point to be noted—a system of land tenure was introduced into Ireland by James I., which, though intended as a beneficial reform, did in fact involve a disregard of undeniable though indefinite rights, and thus produced injustice, litigation, misery and discontent. The rulers of the country were influenced by ideas different from those of their subjects. Ignorance and want of sympathy worked all the results of cruelty and malignity. This failure of justice more than any other single cause, has produced the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of the Irish people.

21. MERE SEVERITY POWERLESS TO ENFORCE LAW.

There can be no question as to the existence, nor as to the lasting and formidable character, of the opposition existing in Ireland between the law of the land and the opinion of the people. The result baffles all our efforts to maintain order, because the strength of law ultimately lies in the sympathy, or at lowest in the acquiescence, of the mass of the people. When the conscience of any people permanently opposes the execution of the law, judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless. Severity then produces either no effect, or bad effects. Executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration, and often with the fate, of criminals.

22. TRUE ISSUE ON WHICH OUR POLICY MUST DEPEND. But before we can decide what are the inferences to be drawn from this undeniable fact of the Irish disaffection to law, we must