A Leap in the Dark

t the criticisms on the new constitution are in themselves futile, or upon certain more or less specific arguments, of which the main object is to establish that the pol

fairness the value both of these general co

c character of the criticisms on the new constitution or upon

such as those set forth in the foregoing pages, by the assertion tha

future is equally a prophet, whether he announces the end of the world or foretells the dawn of a millennium. And history affords no presumption in favour of the prophet who prophesies smooth things. The prognostics of a pessimist may be as much belied by the event as the hopes of an optimist. But for one prophet to decry the predictions of another simply as prophecies is a downrigh

an essential difference between foresight and guessing. The prevision of a philosophic statesman is grounded on the knowledge of the past and on the analysis of existing tendencies. It deals with principles. Such, for example, was the foresight of Burke when he dogmatically foretold that the French Constitution of 1791 could not stand.108 Guessing is at best based on acute observation of the current events of the day, that is of things which are in their nature uncertain. On January 29, 1848, Tocqueville analysed the condition of French society, and in the Chamber of Deputies foretold the approach of revolution. On February 21, 1848, Girardin said that the monarchy of July would not last three days longer. February 24 verified the insight and foresight of the statesman, and proved that the journalist was an acute observer. The diffe

culiarities, and anomalies, therefore the contradictions or anomalies which are patent in the new con

erous. On the face of the matter it is a strange way of reasoning to say that because the constitution is filled with odd arrangements which no man can justify in theory, you therefore, when designing a new constitution, should take no care to make your arrangements consistent and harmonious. But the Gladstonian error goes a good deal deeper than is at first sight apparent. The anomalies or the fictions of the constitution are in reality adaptations, often awkward enough in themselves, of some old institution, and are preserved because, though they look strange, they are found to work well. Thus the King of England was at one time the actual sovereign of the State, or at any rate the most important member of the sovereign power, and the Ministers were in reality, what they are still in name, the King's servants. The powers of the Crown have been greatly diminished, and have bee

reasoning. Ministerialists seem to think that arguments good for the purpose of conservatism are available for the purpose of innovation. This is an error. A conservative reasoner may urge the uncertainty of all prevision, or the fact that the actual constitution, though theoretically absurd or imperfec

t will be found that the Gladstonian pleas in favour of Home Rule, for such are in reality their apologies for the new constitution, may be brought under two heads.

ity for H

sity, forms the implied, if not always the asserted, f

creased. Grattan was a statesman of a more exalted type than O'Connell, and Grattan was more zealous for connection with England than was the Roman Catholic tribune. And though in Grattan's time the grievances of Ireland were in every man's judgment far more intolerable than, even on the showing of Home Rulers, are the wrongs which Ireland now endures, the Ireland of Grattan was loyal to England. O'Connell was a nobler leader than Parnell, and it would be absurd to suppose that any Parnellite or Anti-Parnellite exerted a tenth of O'Connell's influence. Yet Parnell and Parnell's followers have achieved a feat which the hero of Catholic emancipation could never accomplish; O'Connell never obtained for Repeal more than half the votes of Ireland's parliamentary representatives; Parnell and his followers have rallied the vast majority of Irish members in support of Home Rule. Meanwhile year by year the government of England is weakened, and (though the arg

Gladstonian argument. My aim has certainly

ns on which the whole train of reasoning rests are tainted by exaggeration or misapprehension, and the allegations, even if ta

ises are

's policy of Union. The eighty Irish members ask for Home Rule, but the tenant farmers of Ireland ask not for Home Rule but for the ownership of the land; and the Irish tenant farmers will and may under a Unionist Government become owners of their land, and, what is no slight matter, may become owners by honest means. Vain for Mr. M'Carthy110 to assert that Irish farmers would not have accepted even from Mr. Parnell the most favourable of land laws in exchange for Home Rule. Mr. M'Carthy believes what he says, but it is impossible for any student of Irish history or of Irish politics to believe Mr. M'Carthy. Facts are too strong for him. Mr. Lalor showed a prevision denied to our amiable novelist. Gustave de Beaumont understood political philosophy better than the lively recorder of the superficial aspects of recent English history. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Davitt, and the whole line of witnesses before the Special Commission, tell a different tale. The very name of the Land League is significant. Home Rule was a mere theme for academic discussion in the mouth of Mr. Butt. Repeal itself never touched the strongest passions of Irish nature, though advocated by the most eloquent and popular of Irish orators. Not an independent Parliament, but independent ownership of land, has always been the desire of Irish cultivators. It was a cry for the land which gave force to the demand for Home Rule; and an Irish agitator, if his strength fails, renews it by touching the earth. But why confine our observation to Ireland? We here come upon the passions, not of Irish nature,

he Act been extended to the whole United Kingdom. Local laws are open to some of the same objections as temporary laws. The enactment contains some improvements in our criminal procedure. There is no more idle superstition than the belief that criminal procedure does not, like other human ar

y, though not wholly, by the Irish vote. This is a consideration which, as far as it goes, tells in favour of Home Rule. It is, however, a

d in a hopeless dilemma; he dare not draw the only conclusion to which his argument points, namely, that the Irish members must be excluded from the Parliament at Westminster. By

hey sound, do not su

dly such a thing in p

Peel repealed the corn laws-then again politicians could plead the excuse of necessity. In these and like crises the wisest men and the bravest men are forced to recognise the logic of facts; and necessity rather than prudence dictates the course of statesmanship. But no such crisis has now arisen. England and Ireland were as safe under the government of Lord Salisbury as under the government of Mr. Gladstone-perhaps safer. No one except an extremely excited and very rhetorical politician will venture to assert that, if Lord Salisbury instead of Mr. Gladstone had last summer gained a majority of forty, any man or woman throughout the Uni

led at the thought of power passing into the hands of the Whigs; for the Tories had ruled for nearly sixty years, and the Tories had preserved England from revolution and invasion. So at this moment to many well-meaning Liberals the long predominance of the Liberal party makes the possibility of a Cabinet containing politicians who may in any sense be called Tories seem a monstrous calamity, which it is a necessity to avert. Vain to point out that Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour are such Tories as Eldon would have called Jacobins and Lord Melbourne Radicals, and that, they are allied with the best and most trustworthy of living Liberal leaders. Their is no arguing with sentiment; it is necessary to keep the Gladstonian Liberals in office, and the constitution must be sacrificed in order that Lord Salisbury may not resume the Premiership. But there is a deeper cause than all this for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen confuse inconveniences with dangers; they have forgotten what real peril is; they cannot understand the calmness with which

nger in

r for England are in the main drawn from the 'Safeguards' or Restrictions contained in the Bill-from the alleged precedent of Gra

Safeg

ient and more than sufficient to reassure Unionists, and an intimation is sometim

efly dismissed; its answer is in eff

rish Parliament the Restrictions do place a certain restraint, but the Restrictions are, as already shown, not in reality enforceable. They are for good purposes a nullity; they are effective, if at all, almost wholly for evil; they exhibit the radical and fatal inconsistency of Gl

an's Cons

Grattan's Constitution, the inference is drawn that there is no reason to fear

found, in the history of Ireland, can, in 1893, render his acquaintance with the circumstances and the dangers of 1800 equal to the knowledge of the Minister who, in 1800, carried the Act of Union. And Pitt then held that the Union with Ireland was necessary for the preservation of England. If moreover Grattan's Constitution be a precedent for our guidance, let us see to what the precedent points. The leading principles or features of Grattan's Constitution are well known. They are the absolute sovereignty of the Irish Parliament, and its independence of and equality with the Parliament of Great Britain; the renunciation by the British Parliament of any claim whatever to legislate for Ireland, and of any jurisdiction on the part of any British court to entertain appeals from Ireland; and, lastly, the absence of all representation of Ireland in the Parliament at Westminster. Each of these principles or features is denied or reversed by our new Gladstonian constitution. The Irish Parliament is to be, not a sovereign legislature, but a subordinate legislature created by statute, and a legislature of such restricted and inferior authority as to be unworthy of the name of

cess of

tries enjoying Home Rule, and their local independence causes no inconvenience to the United Kingdom or to the British Empire. It fo

e Dominion itself, Man, Jersey, and Guernsey, every English colony with representative institutions, are each described, by one Gladstonian reasoner or another, as happy and prosperous under Home Rule. But there is no one who will deny that the dissimilarities between the governments existing in each of the countries referred to are at least as

the supremacy of the Sultan, all that need be said is that it is satisfactory to learn on the authority of Mr. Gladstone that any part whatever of the Turkish Empire is well governed and happy. If any one can seriously suppose that the prosperity of Man and the Channel Islands, which reap all the benefits and bear none of the burdens of connection with Great Britain, and moreover have at no time been discontented, affords any reason for suppo

dependence throughout the British Empire, are adduced as presumptions that Home Rule would knit together Great Britain and Ireland, or, as the cant of the day goes, transform a paper union into a union of hearts. If New York be loyal to the Unite

d argument-let us co

en used as a means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the advocates of the new constitution pretend to increase the moral strength of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties

Zealand has never been hostile to England; her people are loyal to the British Crown. Ireland, or part of the Irish people, has been divided from England by a feud of centuries; it would be difficult among Irish Nationalists to obtain even the show of loyalty to the Crown. New Zealand is wealthy, and New Zealand pays not a single tax into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Ireland is poor, and, if her taxation is lightened by Home Rule, the tribute which will be paid to England will be heavy, and

he United Kingdom. This is a point which has not as yet arrested attention. For the safety of the United Kingdom it is absolutely necessary that the authority of the Imperial Government, or, in other words, the law

life have preached abolition in South Carolina; difficult indeed was the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and small the practical respect paid in Massachusetts to the doctrine of the Dred Scott Case. Unless all reports are false, the Negro vote throughout the Southern States is at this moment practically falsified, and little do the Constitutional Amendments benefit a Negro in any case where his conduct offends Southern principle or prejudice. For my present argument it matters nothing whether the oppression of individuals or the defiance of law was or was not, in all these cases, as it certainly was i

st one murder. The Swiss Executive (called the Federal Council) forthwith took steps to restore order and to reinstate the lawful Cantonal government. Their own commissioner, a military officer, in effect declined to put the overthrown government back in power. Order was restored, but the law was never vindicated. A strange set of negotiations, transactions, or intrigues took place. In the Federal Assembly at Berne, the Conservatives, a minority, urged the rights of the lawful government of Ticino. The Liberals defended or palliated the revolutionists. On the whole the advantage seems to have rested with the latter. A trial before a Federal Court took place, but the accused were acquitted. No one, if I am rightly informed, was punished for an act of manifest treason. It is even more noticeable that Professor Hilty, a distinguished and respected Swiss publicist, vindicates or palliates the admitted breach of l

r the colony. The Victorian Premier (Mr. Service) announced in Parliament that their landing should be hindered. The police, acting under the orders of the Ministry, boarded the ship which brought the strangers, went near to assaulting the captain, and forcibly prevented the hated travellers from setting foot on shore. By arrangement between the Melbourne Government, the captain, and the three men, who were by this time in terror of their lives, the victims of lawlessness were carried back to England. That the law had been grossly violated no one can really dispute. The violation was the more serious because it excited no notice. No appeal was apparently made to the Courts. The Governor-the representative of Imperial power and Imperial justice-knew presumably what was going on, yet he uttered not one word of remonstrance. The Agent-General for Victoria, when at last a private person i

ment needs that the law should be maintained, and the rights of individuals be protected, in Ireland with greater stringency than the law is enforced or the rights of individuals are protected either under a federal government or in a British colony. Miserable indeed would be the position of England were she forced in Ireland to wink at lawlessness such as but

Policy o

e besetting vice of politicians and th

ur of Home Rule or of our new constitution. The right attitude for a politician, it is urged, is trust; he should trust the Irish leaders and their assurances or professions; he should trust in the training conferred upon men by the exercise of power; he should trust in the

e three forms, which it may on this

o trust the I

ive it. Men are trusted because they are trustworthy. The Irish Home Rule leaders as a body cannot inspire trust, for the simple reason that

s of United Ireland when Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan were in power at Dublin. The men whom we are told to trust are men who did enter into a criminal conspiracy by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and expelling from the country the English landlords125; they are men found guilty of not denouncing intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but of persisting in it with a knowledge of its effect.126 They are proved to have made payments to compensate persons injured in the commission of crime127; they are men who have solicited and taken the money of Patrick Ford, the advocate of dynamite; and have invited and obtained the co-operation of the Clan-na-Gael.128 Their whole system of agitation has been utterly unlike that of honourable agitators, conspirators, or rebels; it would have excited the horror of O'Connell; it would have been repudiated with disgust by Davis, by Gavan Duffy, by Smith O'Brien, and the o

ages of United Ireland. In a sense they now believe that the Home Rule Bill is a satisfactory compromise. But the belief in each case must be considered essentially superficial. Men are the victims of their own career: it is absolutely impossible that leaders many of whom have indulged in virulence, in slanders, in cruelty, in oppression, should be suddenly credited with strict truthfulness, with sobriety, with respect for the rights of others. Even as it is, landlords are, in Mr. Sexton's eyes, criminals,130 and he therefore cannot be trusted to act with fairness towards Irish landowners. Mr. Redmond holds that imprisoned dynamiters and other criminals should be released, whether guilty or not, and it is therefore reasonable not to put Mr. Redmond in a position where he can insist upon an amnesty for dynamiters and conspirators. Nor is it at all clear that as regards amnesty any Anti-Parnellite dare dissent from the doctrine of Mr. Redmond. It is odious, it will be said, to dwell on faults or crimes which, were it possible, eve

shmen with the government of their own country, and you may feel

friend Mr. Bryce. Every word which in the following passage refers to the State legi

lic functions, whether of voting or of legislating, tended of itself to secure their proper exercise. We know that power does not purify men in despotic governments, but we talk as if it did so in free governments. Every one would of course admit, if the point were put flatly to him, that power alone is not enough, but that there must be added to power, in the case of the voter, a direct interest in the choice of good men, in the case of the legislator, responsibility to the voters, in the case of both, a measure of enlightenment and honour. What the legislatures of the worst States show is not merely the need

ountry in the world. But the warmest eulogist of America seeks throughout his work for the explanation of the fact which is really past dispute, that the political morality of the United States sinks below the general morality

uman nature, and should believe that the concession of Home Rule, just because it meets the wishes of the Irish people, will

satisfying popular aspirations often arises from the fundamental faults of human nature. Trust in the people may often be wiser than distrust, but to suppose that masses of men are wiser, more reasonable, or more virtuous than the individuals of which they consist, is as idle a political delusion as the corresponding ecclesiastical delusion that a church has virtues denied to the believers who make up the church. On this point an anecdote makes my meaning clearer than an argument. On May 15, 1848, the French National Assembly was invaded by an armed mob, who shouted and yelled for three hours and more, and threatened at any moment to slaughter the representatives of France. From June 22-26, 1848, there raged the most terrible of the insurrections which Paris has seen. For the first time in modern history the workmen of the capital rose against the body of the more or less well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in their homes. Betwee

save time and hold that the measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own inherent merits. But to a critic of the new constitution another explanation suggests itself. Can it be possible that Ministerialists themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new policy? Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain. Who can say with assurance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy? Is there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of the Bill? Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland