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throughout the United Kingdom into harmony with humanity and the demands of morality. There may indeed be a higher law than the rule of keeping one's promise; but before a man or a nation incurs even the appearance of bad faith, it is well to make sure that the so-called higher law of conscience is not in reality the lower dictate of indolence or cowardice.

55. FAILURE WOULD POINT TO SEPARATION.

Neither nations nor individuals, indeed, can be bound in duty to do impossibilities; the limit of power is the limit of responsibility. But if England can no longer enforce justice in Ireland, there remains the grave question-whether this fearful result of past misdoing or error does not call for Separation rather than for Home Rule.*

CONCLUSION.

Let us here look back and sum up our argument. The strength of the arguments for Home Rule depends upon the fact that they fall in with the prevailing opinions of the day; and though public opinion deserves great consideration, we cannot really judge of the value of any prevalent belief without examining the causes from which it springs. The state of opinion which favours Home Rule results from various and even self-contradictory feelings, some of which belong to the highest and some to the lowest part of human nature; humanity and a sense of justice being here curiously combined with indolence and impatience. The arguments for Home Rule rest upon one doubtful assumption, and one undoubted fact. The doubtful assumption is, that the root of Irish discontent is the outraged feeling of nationality. The undoubted fact is, that in Ireland on all matters either directly or even remotely connected with the tenure of land, the law of the courts is opposed to the customs, to the moral sentiment, we may say to the law, of the people. Hence the Queen's tribunals are weak, because they are not supported by that popular assent whence judges derive half their authority; the tribunals of the League are strong, because their decisions commend themselves to the traditional feeling of the people. But both these considerations really tell almost as much against as in favour of the notion that the diseases (due in the first instance to the original vice of the connection between

* England's Case,' pp. 128-141.

England and Ireland) under which Irish society now suffers, can be cured by the creation of an Irish Parliament.

56. DILEMMA.

If the passion of nationality is the cause of the malady, the proposed cure is useless; for Home Rule will not turn the people of Ireland into a nation. If, on the other hand, a vicious system of land tenure be the cause of lawlessness, then the proposed cure is needless; for the Parliament of the United Kingdom can reform the land system of Ireland, and ought to be able to carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could any Parliament sitting at Dublin.

57. CHOICE OF EVILS.

It is, however, amply proved that the task of maintaining peace, order, and freedom in Ireland, is at the present juncture one of supreme difficulty. Any possible course now open to us involves gigantic inconvenience, not to say tremendous perils. We have nothing before us but a choice of difficulties and of evils. Every course is open to valid criticism.

How to devise a scheme of Home Rule which shall satisfy Ireland, while leaving to England as much supremacy as may be necessary for the prosperity or even the continued existence of the British Empire, is a problem hard enough to solve in theory, and which we may not unreasonably hold to be insoluble in practice.

To carry out by peaceful means the political separation of countries which, for good and for evil, have for centuries been bound together by position and by history, is, in the judgment of statesmen, an operation involving dangers too rast for serious contemplation.

The maintenance of the Union must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the Treaty of Union with any good effect, means that while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland, must strenuously and without either fear or favour assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics, and must at the same time put down every outrage and reform every abuse.

58. THREE ARDUOUS PATHS.

Yet to one of these three courses we are absolutely tied down. Each path is arduous. To complain about the nature of things is childish. We must all of us look facts in the face. "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be. Why then should we desire to be deceived?” * We must calmly compare the advantages of the three steep roads which lie open to the nation, in order to decide which of them we are bound to follow by motives of expediency and of justice.

We will once more sum up the comparison already made of these three paths.

(a) Home Rule.

It may be pleaded for Home Rule that it offers two obvious advantages. It would satisfy the immediate wish of millions of Irishmen; and it would make it easier to adapt Irish institutions to Irish wants. These two results, which are the best that can be looked for from Home Rule, would be real advantages, and it would be folly to underrate them. Indeed, the moral gain of meeting the wishes of the Irish people would be so incalculable that nothing short of a conviction that Home Rule of necessity involves intolerable evils should prevent the experiment from being tried.

It is sometimes suggested that Home Rule would have the further advantage of lessening English responsibility for the government of Ireland. What it really might do is to lessen England's sense of responsibility for misrule in Ireland; but this, so far from being a blessing, would in truth be one of the greatest of evils.

But apart from this possibility, Home Rule would, as we have already shown, inflict inevitable evils upon England. Under the form of Federation, it dislocates and weakens the whole English Constitution. Under its least objectionable form, that of Colonial Independence, it brings upon England many of the perils of separation; it involves, if it is to have a fair chance of success, large pecuniary sacrifice, and is not likely to secure real goodwill between Great Britain and Ireland. Lastly, while not freeing England from moral responsibility for protecting the rights of every British subject, it does virtually give up the attempt to enforce those rights.

*Butler's 'Sermons,' vii. p. 136, ed. 1726.

It should also be observed that while no form of Home Rule offers any promise of finality, the form which is least injurious to England is that which gives Ireland most independence. The inference from these facts cannot be missed. Home Rule is the halfway-house to Separation. Grant it, and in a short time Irish Independence will become the wish of England. There are, no doubt, some who desire Home Rule precisely for that reason; but if two countries are to become independent, it is surely better for each not to go through the disappointment and the heart-burning which belong to a period of unwilling connection.

(b) Separation.

Separation is an idea which has not entered into the practical consideration of Englishmen. The evils it threatens are obvious. It would lessen the resources of Great Britain, while increasing the demand upon them; it would lower the fame of the country while planting by her side a foreign, perhaps a hostile neighbour; it involves the desertion of loyal fellow-citizens, who have trusted in the good faith of England. Yet the material losses and perhaps the dangers which it involves may be overrated. Great Britain might find compensating elements of power in her complete freedom of action and restored unity of national sentiment; and she might also find herself able to give to the Loyalists protection more effectual than could be secured by any written constitution. Moreover, the spirit of nationality, which could not be satisfied by any form of Home Rule, would have its full effect, be that what it may, as a consequence of Separation.

(c) Union.

The difficulties of maintaining the Union are as obvious as those involved in the other two courses. It involves at the outset a strenuous and much-to-be-regretted conflict with the will of the majority of the Irish people; it requires at once the strict enforcement of law, and the resolute effort to strip law of all injustice; it may require large pecuniary sacrifices; and it certainly will require a constancy in just purpose which is supposed, and not without reason, to be specially difficult to a democracy. On the other hand, these difficulties are not unprecedented, though some of them have assumed a new form. We have some advantages unknown to our forefathers. We can, more easily than they could, remodel the practices of the Constitution, the rules of party government, and

the procedure of the House of Commons. The English democracy, further, just because it is a democracy, may, like the democracy of America, enforce with unflinching firmness laws which, representing the deliberate will of the people, are supported by the vast majority of the citizens of the United Kingdom. The English democracy, because it is a democracy, may also with a good conscience destroy the remnants of feudal institutions and all systems of land tenure found unsuitable to the wants of the Irish people.

Whatever be the difficulties (and they are many) of maintaining the Union not in form only but in reality, the policy is favoured no less by the current of English history than by the tendencies of modern civilisation. It preserves that unity of the State which is essential to the authority of England and to the maintenance of the Empire; it provides, as matters now stand, the only means of giving legal protection to a large body of loyal British subjects; it is the refusal not only to abdicate power, but (what is of far more consequence) to renounce the fulfilment of imperative duties. Nor does union imply uniformity. Unity of government-equality of rights-diversity of institutions; these are the watchwords for all Unionists. To obtain these objects may be beyond our power, and the limit to power is the limit to responsibility; still, whatever may be the difficulties or even the disadvantages of maintaining the Union, it undoubtedly has in its favour not only all the recommendations which must belong to a policy of rational Conservatism, but also these two decisive advantages—that it does sustain the strength of the United Kingdom, and that it does not call for any dereliction of duty.

59. DUTY REQUIRES MAINTENANCE OF UNION.

If, then, our comparison of the three courses open to us has been just, the conclusion is obvious. It is at this moment the duty even more than the interest of England to maintain the Union. If the time should come when the effort to maintain the unity of the State proves too great for the power of Great Britain, or the necessary means should be clearly repugnant to justice, to humanity, or to our democratic principles-if it should turn out that after every effort to enforce just laws by just methods, our justice itself (from whatever cause) remains hateful to the mass of the Irish people—then it will be clear that the Union must, for the sake of England no less than of Ireland, come to an end.

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