Present Irish Questions Part 7

Why, then, should Ireland contribute to such charges as public works in Edinburgh and London, as the maintenance of the great English dockyards and harbours, as the cost of the army and navy outside Ireland, and of the government and administration of England and Scotland? Clearly on the Treasury hypothesis she should not contribute; and if she does, she has an immense counterclaim, so far as her contributions are applied to these local objects. But, in truth, this whole argument, when examined, is a mere sophism. The revenues of the Three Kingdoms are paid into a common exchequer; they are distributed according to the uses of the State; this expenditure, as a general rule, must be held to be Imperial, not local, and cannot give a part of the Three Kingdoms a right to make a claim against another. The State spends millions on London which it does not spend on Surrey; it spends millions in Hants which it does not spend in Berks.h.i.+re: does this circ.u.mstance give Surrey or Berks.h.i.+re a t.i.tle to say we can make a demand on London and Hants? Precisely in the same way, the expenditure of the State on Ireland, as contra-distinguished from that on Great Britain, cannot, at least as a general principle, give Great Britain a right to make a counterclaim on Ireland.

It is unnecessary to point out how this theory has a tendency to create local and even national ill-will; to set parts of one country against other parts, and two countries against each other; it distinctly alienates Ireland from Great Britain; as I have said, it is full of mischief and peril. In truth, however, it is a mere device to excuse the overcharge of Irish taxation; it has never entered the minds of statesmen. Nothing can be more certain than that every great British financier, from the day of Pitt to the day of Peel, and to the day of Mr. Gladstone, has regarded the expenditure of the Three Kingdoms, as this is paid into a common exchequer, as a general fund to be allocated as the State requires; and has not regarded it as a fund, under local heads, to be laid out in separate districts, so as to give any one district a counterclaim against another. I quote from a report of one of the members of the Childers Commissions: 'A division of the expenditure of the United Kingdom into "charge for Irish purposes" and "Imperial expenditure," cannot be made under the system of finance embodied in the const.i.tution established by the Legislative Union. All expenditure under that system is "expenditure of the United Kingdom," or, to express it more briefly, "Imperial expenditure;" and all Imperial expenditure is defrayed from the common fund of the Imperial Exchequer. If a part of the Imperial expenditure be described as a charge "for Irish purposes," this cla.s.sification does not affect the fact that it is Imperial expenditure, and charged as such upon the whole Imperial revenue. To regard this expenditure as non-Imperial, to deduct it from the particular revenue contributed by Ireland to Imperial expenditure, to treat the fraction of Irish revenue left as if it were the whole of the Irish contribution to Imperial expenditure, and to regard Imperial expenditure itself as not including "the charge for Irish purposes," would be to do what the Const.i.tution does not sanction: it would be to deal with the revenue and expenditure of the United Kingdom as if the revenues of Great Britain and Ireland were raised and administered by separate authorities, each of which, having first, out of its own revenue, defrayed its separate charges, then applied the balance to payment of common expenses, which, in that case, would be properly cla.s.sified as Imperial.'[176] And the evidence of Sir Robert Giffen is to the same effect: 'The opinion which I have formed is that, on the whole, it is not possible to make the distinction between the different objects of Imperial expenditure which is made in some of these discussions; that, in fact, all the expenditure by an Imperial Government is to be considered expenditure for Imperial purposes, and although part of it may be spent locally, you cannot in any way call it expenditure for the special benefit of that locality. It is expenditure for the general objects of the Imperial Government.'[177]

The theory of the Treasury is thus essentially false; but accidentally, it contains, I think, a residuum of truth. When, as between two countries, one pays a considerable sum, exclusively or mainly from local rates, and the same charge in the other country is for the most part defrayed from Imperial taxation by the State, it appears to me that a portion of the sum so paid by the State may give one country a counterclaim against the other to some extent. This is the case as between Great Britain and Ireland; the cost of national education and of the police force is largely discharged in Great Britain by local rates; in Ireland it amounts to about 2,700,000, and is mainly defrayed from Imperial taxes; this may create a counterclaim against Ireland within reasonable limits at least. No doubt the charge of bringing up the young of the poorer cla.s.ses and of maintaining public order by a suitable force, ought largely to be an Imperial charge; but when in one community it is chiefly borne by local funds, and in another it is chiefly borne by the common Exchequer of both, this seems to give the first community a partial claim against the second.

This counterclaim, such as it is, has been reckoned, in addition to a sum for free grants, at about 500,000 a year by the Childers Commission; but it did not thoroughly go into the subject; this estimate is believed to be too low by well-informed persons; the counterclaim has been calculated to be about 1,000,000 sterling. Lord Salisbury's Government, we have seen, promised to appoint a second Commission to examine this question at length, besides some other financial questions suggested by the Report of the Childers Commission; for some unknown reason it has not redeemed its pledge; it is very desirable that it should redeem it. Apart from the mischief of a delay approaching a breach of public faith, the only inference that can be drawn, if this promise is broken, is that the Government accepts the view in this matter of the Childers Commission.

The Childers Commission has conclusively proved that Ireland is much too highly taxed; whatever counterclaim may be made against this excess, the overcharge can be little less than two millions a year. The arguments urged against this conclusion are mere leather and prunella that may be brushed aside; the Report of the Commission has had the sanction of nearly all economists of a high order. By all means let another Commission strike a balance after making every fair allowance; but if it shall be struck, as it must be in Ireland's favour, the only real question for impartial men will be how it shall be best discharged. Ireland has practically acquiesced for years in fiscal injustice; in any view of the case she has no right to call for a change in our whole system of finance for her special benefit. Still less has she a right to demand that her customs and excise duties should be placed at a lower level than those of Great Britain; this would raise a mischievous barrier between the two countries; this policy would be, perhaps, impossible; if possible, it would probably injure Ireland greatly in the long run. The only remaining alternative is to leave our existing fiscal system intact, but to make an annual grant from the exchequer for Irish uses, as compensation for excessive taxation; this has the support of the Childers Commission. 'The third method, and that which most strongly recommends itself to our judgment, is to give compensation to Ireland by making an annual allocation of revenue in their favour, to be employed in promoting the material prosperity and social welfare of the country.'[178] It is difficult to suppose, should a large yearly sum be found to be due to Ireland, as affairs now stand, that Parliament will refuse to pay honourably a just debt; it would be a shameful act to repudiate an obligation of the kind. Years ago Pitt declared in his characteristic style that 'Ireland might safely rely on Great Britain for the discharge of any fair claim on her; the liberality, the justice, the honour of the people of Great Britain have never been found deficient.' The time has come to test the value of this pledge; it has been announced by the highest authority, in which English opinion largely prevails, that Ireland has been immensely overtaxed for years: will the 'people of Great Britain' give effect to this judgment, and make good a claim which hardly admits of a doubt? The demand of Ireland, no doubt, is not sustained by violent agitation and the shouts of mult.i.tudes; but it is backed by all that is best in Irish opinion; it rests upon the simplest financial justice. It is dangerous to treat a demand such as this with contempt, and still more so with weak sophistry; not that Ireland can make an effective resistance to fiscal wrong, however clearly proved; and I for one deprecate rhodomontade about 'the Boston tea-s.h.i.+ps.' But a claim may have great moral force, though it be not supported by physical power; the disregard of this claim would provoke well-informed Irishmen, and weaken the Union perhaps greatly; and, after all, is it a seemly sight, is it becoming in the eyes of the world, that the richest country in Europe should practically impose an iniquitous burden upon the poorest?

CHAPTER VIII

THE QUESTIONS OF IRISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND EDUCATION--OTHER QUESTIONS--CONCLUSION

Irish county government--The grand jury system in the eighteenth century--Its merits and defects--The grand jury system in the nineteenth century, and especially since 1836--The Irish poor law system--Elected and _ex-officio_ guardians--The local government of cities and towns in Ireland--Munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions founded in Ireland by the Norman kings--Why they did not prosper--Boroughs and munic.i.p.alities founded by James I. and the Stuarts--Their condition in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--The Munic.i.p.al Reform Act of 1840--The Towns Commissioners Acts--Attempts to reform the munic.i.p.al system of local government in Ireland--The Local Government of Ireland Act, 1898--Complete change in Irish local government--The County Councils--The County Borough Councils--The District, Rural, and the Urban District Councils--Their functions, rights, and duties--All these bodies placed on a democratic basis--Att.i.tude of the County Councils in the southern provinces--Education in Ireland--History of primary education--The national system of education--The principles on which it is founded--How it has worked, and what its results have been--Secondary education in Ireland--Its history--Its present condition very imperfect--The Intermediate Education Act--University education in Ireland--Its history--Trinity College--The Queen's Colleges and the Queen's University founded by Peel--Their comparative failure--Mr. Gladstone's Bill to reform University education in Ireland--Its glaring errors and failure--Trinity College thrown open in 1873--The Royal University founded in 1879--Present state of University education in Ireland--The true principles of reform--Other Irish questions--Conclusion.

That local government in Ireland should still be a 'Present Irish Question,' may appear strange to persons only versed in the mere routine of politics. The subject has been before Parliament for nearly thirty years; it has engaged the attention of more than one of its Committees; b.u.t.t endeavoured, to no purpose, to legislate on it. In 1892 Lord Salisbury's Government brought in a measure which aimed at transforming the whole system of administering local affairs in Ireland; but it had unquestionable defects and was vehemently opposed; unfortunately, as I believe, it was permitted to drop. Six years afterwards, that is, in 1898, the greater part of a parliamentary session was employed in dealing with the question again; a Bill became law which placed Irish local government, in all its departments, upon a new basis, and completely changed the characteristics it had had for centuries. The measure was to be a _ne plus ultra_; it was extolled by applauding partisans as a magnificent scheme of popular reform; these have since, over and over again, declared that its success has been more than manifest. It is too soon to p.r.o.nounce, with anything like confidence, on what its ultimate results may be, or even to say, with certainty, how it will practically work; but enough has already been made apparent to cause thoughtful and fair-minded Irishmen to regard the changes it has effected with grave misgivings; to question the principles on which it rests, or at least the wisdom of applying them to Ireland as she now is; and to ask whether it must not be amended if the social structure of Ireland is not to be still more violently disturbed, than it has been by the experiments that have been made on it. Besides, the local government and administration of every community, especially if formed on a popular type, affect its existence in many ways; strongly indicate what its opinions are, what its qualities, what its evident tendencies; in a word, largely represent its essential nature. It was not for nothing that in his survey of the Revolution in France, Burke did not confine himself to the sovereign a.s.sembly at Versailles, but turned his penetrating glance on the petty a.s.semblies which had been set up in the new-made departments, for the conduct of their local affairs; these, he insisted, formed the truest expression of the mind of the people and of the leaders at its head. For these reasons, therefore, if we would understand Ireland, her local government is a 'Present Irish Question;' it is a question, moreover, which, whatever may be said, in all probability has not been finally settled.

In order to understand the subject, I must glance at the system of Irish local government, as this existed until, as it were, yesterday; I turn, in the first instance, to Irish county government. The beginnings of this scheme have been traced back to the time of Strafford; but it was not finally established until the reign of William III., when the subjugation of Ireland had been made complete. The Irish grand juries always had criminal jurisdiction in their countries like their English fellows; but unlike these they were now entrusted with almost absolute control over Irish county government. This was partly because they were representatives of the conquering race, by this time the owners of nine-tenths of the lands of the country; and partly because there was no local organisation in Ireland, like the English parish, which could give local influence to the conquered race. The grand juries were always composed of the leading landed gentry of their respective counties; they were nominated by the sheriffs, that is, by officials of the Central Government; they were wholly devoid of a popular element; and as no Catholic could have a share in their councils, until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, they embodied, in the fullest sense, the Protestant ascendency of the day, supreme in every sphere of authority in the State. The grand juries had almost the exclusive power of administering the local affairs of their counties, of managing their roads, public buildings, and police; and they levied the charges for these by a local rate, known as the county cess to this hour, and imposed almost wholly on the occupiers of the soil, that is, in five cases out of six on the Catholic peasantry, a striking instance of taxation without representation to check it. These a.s.semblies of local magnates met twice a year at the a.s.sizes which were held in their counties. Miss Edgeworth has given us graphic accounts of them: how a seat on a grand jury was deemed a prize to be sometimes fought for; how the grand juries entertained the judges in state, and vied with these sages in their mighty potations; and how, while wretches were hanged and jurymen dined, the a.s.size towns were scenes of not fastidious revelry. There was much jobbing, corruption, and waste in the administration of the counties in those days; much of the 'scratch me, and I will scratch you;' much 'give and take' at the cost of the ratepayers. But there was another and better side to the picture: the Irish gentry of the time had the faculty of command; they ruled their districts efficiently with their police; the public works for which they were responsible were usually good. Arthur Young has especially noticed that the roads they constructed were almost always well laid out and kept up.

Catholics were not admitted on grand juries until the great Relief Act of 1793, the first general relaxation of the execrable penal code. But the Catholic members of these bodies have always been few; the large majority of the Irish landlords remains still Protestant. The bureaucracy of the Castle, after the Union, began to encroach on the domain of the grand juries; at the same time the growing needs of the country made the expenditure on local affairs much larger. The grand juries lost much of their authority by degrees; they were more and more controlled by the Central Government, which supplanted them in a variety of ways; and they were ere long compelled to vote sums for public works of different kinds for the behoof of their counties. This change effectually checked corruption and jobbing; but as the requirements of the counties increased, and the 'imperative presentments,' as they were called, were augmented, the charge of the local rate or county cess became more onerous--it has advanced enormously in the last sixty years; and this was still mainly imposed on the Catholic peasantry. The civil or fiscal administration, which the grand juries possessed until 1898, was finally arranged by an Act of Parliament pa.s.sed in 1836,[179] supplemented, from time to time, by subsequent statutes. These bodies were composed of the same elements, and nominated by the sheriffs as before; and they had a general supervision over all the public works, roads, bridges, and buildings for public purposes, comprised within their different counties, including within these areas nearly all villages, and the large majority of the lesser towns. But they were made strictly dependent on the Central Government; this had the appointment of their chief officers; their accounts were subjected to a regular audit; and their 'imperative presentments' were largely extended. They acquired, too, an additional jurisdiction in some respects, especially as regards inquiries into criminal injuries and compensating persons who had been sufferers, and as regards voting an extra police force in disturbed districts; but their old local police had disappeared, and had been replaced by the great central constabulary force. A change, too, was effected in the modes through which local rates were voted in the counties for public purposes. These sums were 'presented' in the first instance at 'baronial' and 'county at large'

sessions, held by county justices and ratepayers of substance; but these bodies were subordinate to the grand juries, and to a considerable extent drawn from the same cla.s.ses; no popular element was infused in county government, and the grand juries were, in the last resort, supreme, within the limits which had been a.s.signed to them. The local expenditure voted and a.s.sessed in this way was subject to examination by a judge of a.s.size, who 'fiated' it, as a general rule; and ratepayers had a right to challenge it, by a procedure called 'a traverse,' which, however, was seldom turned to account.

The Irish grand juries were thus oligarchic bodies, survivals of the Protestant ascendency of a bygone age, and with a tendency, in their later history, to become subordinate boards of the Castle. I pa.s.s on to the Irish poor law system, another considerable department of Irish local government. As we have seen, unlike what had been the case in England, no poor law existed in Ireland until 1838; the want of such a measure was one of the causes of the pressure of a huge ma.s.s of indigence on the soil before the catastrophe of 1845-47. The Irish poor law, with some marked distinctions, was a.n.a.logous to the new English poor law, as it has long been called; it has now been in operation for about sixty years. The country was divided into a series of unions, which have varied from 130 to 163 in number; at present there are 159 of these; these were the princ.i.p.al units for carrying the poor law system into effect. The unions were again subdivided into lesser districts, electoral divisions for the county, wards for the larger towns; the persons chosen to administer the poor law were taken from these areas; and the unions and all that pertained to them were placed under the control of the Central Government, represented by the Local Government Board of Ireland. The persons returned from the electoral divisions and the wards were selected by the votes of the ratepayers, and were known as the elected guardians; a popular element was thus introduced into the administration of the law, which had never been introduced into Irish county government. The vote of the ratepayers, however, was c.u.mulative, not single; the largest ratepayers had the most votes, a safeguard, it has been a.s.sumed, for property; and the elected guardians, in theory at least, were balanced by an equal number of _ex-officio_ guardians, composed of magistrates within the unions. The chief duties of the elected and the _ex-officio_ guardians, collectively known as Boards of Guardians, were to provide for the wants of the poor, and to a.s.sess and levy poor rates for that purpose; but many other duties were gradually imposed on them, the princ.i.p.al of these being the care of the sanitary state of the lesser towns within their districts. There was a marked difference between the incidence of the poor rate and of the county rate, or cess, of the grand juries. The county cess, we have seen, was mainly a charge on the Catholic occupiers of the soil, the poor rate was, to a very considerable extent, a charge on the owners, for the most part Protestants; for the landlord was bound to pay the whole poor rate in the case of the pettiest holdings, and to allow his tenants half the poor rate in the case of other holdings; by these means the burden of at least half the poor rate, it is believed, was borne by the Irish landed gentry. It should be added that the elected guardians have practically had the administration of the poor law in their hands; the _ex-officio_ guardians, especially of late years, took little part in it.[180]

I turn from the administration of local rural affairs in Ireland to that of its chief cities and its towns. The Irish towns, conquered and settled by the Danes, had, perhaps, a kind of munic.i.p.al government; the Plantagenet kings conferred munic.i.p.al rights as freely in Ireland as they did in England. Thus Dublin received a charter from John, modelled on that of his 'liegemen of Bristol;' Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, and several other towns were incorporated and given powers of self-government at different periods of the Middle Ages. But the munic.i.p.al life and the munic.i.p.al spirit which grew up and gained strength in the thriving towns of England, and secured for them a large measure of local liberty, had hardly any existence in a land like Ireland, distracted by feudal and tribal anarchy; the corporate cities and towns of Ireland fell into the hands of great Anglo-Norman n.o.bles and Celtic chiefs, and seem to have all but lost their local franchises. During the long agony of the sixteenth century, when Ireland was devastated by a horrible strife of race and faith, these privileges were still further effaced; at the death of Elizabeth the Irish munic.i.p.al centres, with the exception of the capital, were mere names and shadows. A great change took place when the subjugated land pa.s.sed under the domination of the first Stuarts. English law was now extended over the whole of Ireland; a colonial caste of settlers was becoming lords of the soil; the Government was conducted by the men at the Castle, ruling through a Parliament largely composed of the new settlers.

James I. created forty-six Irish boroughs with a stroke of the pen, and gave them a representation in the Parliament and munic.i.p.al rights; but these, for the most part, were mere villages; they obtained their large privileges solely in order to support 'the English interest,' as it was called, in the Irish House of Commons. This system was continued by the later Stuarts; besides Dublin and the larger towns of Ireland, there were about a hundred of these petty munic.i.p.alities and parliamentary boroughs in the eighteenth century. These places, however, could have no munic.i.p.al freedom, and were wholly devoid of munic.i.p.al feeling; they became nearly all the mere appanages of the neighbouring leading families; and, with hardly an exception, they were extreme types of the Protestant ascendency which prevailed everywhere. Something of the same kind was witnessed in England, under the aristocratic rule of that age, but there was the difference between a sorry caricature and a picture; the great cities and the better towns of England still retained an ample measure of munic.i.p.al liberty, and, especially, did not lose the munic.i.p.al spirit; the exact contrary was the case in Ireland.

A large majority of the little Irish boroughs were deprived of their parliamentary representation at the Union, but they retained their nominal munic.i.p.al rights. They still remained under the control of the chief landed gentry; and they became, as indeed they had always been, centres of maladministration, corruption, and peculation of all kinds. When, after the pa.s.sing of the great Reform Act of 1832, statesmen directed their minds to the questions of corporate and munic.i.p.al reform in England, they naturally turned their minds to Ireland also, where this reform was notoriously still more imperative. After the publication of a masterly report in 1834-35, which thoroughly ill.u.s.trated the whole subject, the abuses in the Irish corporations were shown to be such--they were enormous even in the cities and larger towns--that Peel, the leader of the Opposition, actually gave them up; he proposed to deprive the corporate towns of all munic.i.p.al rights and franchises, and to place them under the authority of Commissioners appointed by the Crown. This plan, however, was rejected by the Melbourne Government, and was not sanctioned by the House of Commons; after a long and angry controversy, which continued for years, a measure became law as late as 1840; and by this, with the exception of ten, all the corporate towns of Ireland lost their munic.i.p.al rights, and were thus left without any power of self-government. With respect even to the ten still enfranchised towns, their old privileges were greatly curtailed and were transferred to the Central Government; and their munic.i.p.al liberties were restricted and narrowed. They retained, indeed, many rights of self-government; but the munic.i.p.al franchise was placed at a high level; the great body of the townsmen did not possess it; and they were subject to the supervision of the Local Government Board, that is, of the Central Government, to a considerable extent at least. True munic.i.p.al life, and the munic.i.p.al sentiment, could not, therefore, become well developed, in the case of towns under such conditions; they showed but few symptoms of the wonderful growth of prosperity and power which has been such a marked feature in the history of the great corporate towns of England, in what may be called the Victorian age, though, no doubt, the cases were widely different--poor Ireland could not, in this respect, compete with wealthy and progressive England. The deficiency of corporate towns in Ireland was felt ere long to be such, that, in 1854, and subsequent years, munic.i.p.al rights were, in some measure, extended to nearly a hundred of these towns. These places were governed by bodies called Town Commissioners elected by a kind of popular vote; but the authority of these bodies has never been large; the munic.i.p.al franchise was very high; and these towns were also under the Irish Local Government Board.

Munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, like others of English origin, had thus, from a variety of causes, when transferred to Ireland, only a stunted, imperfect, and maimed existence. We may briefly glance at the operation of the system of rural and urban local government, of which we have endeavoured to sketch the outlines. Except, perhaps, in the instance of criminal injuries, and of the compensation to be adjudged by them, where they did not always give proof of a judicial spirit, the grand juries, for upwards of two generations, administered county affairs very well; they were economical, prudent, and jealous of expense, if the public buildings they sanctioned were, occasionally, too costly; but the system was an anachronism, and had had its day. In ordinary times the Irish poor law was reasonably well administered by the Boards of Guardians, as well, probably, as was the case in England; they were rather parsimonious in a.s.sessing rates, and gave little attention to the sanitary state of their towns, but, on the whole, there was not much cause to complain of them; and the Irish people, it must be recollected, have never liked the poor law. The local administration of the cities and the larger towns of Ireland was worse--a notable exception was seen in Belfast; but these, as a rule, gave proof of the restricted system on which their government had been formed; the results appeared in a high death rate, in bad supplies of water, in crowds of squalid and deserted dwellings--in a word, in stagnation and a want of progress, if other and powerful causes concurred.

When the movement conducted by Parnell acquired strength, almost a revolution pa.s.sed over the seats of Irish local government, where these, except in Ulster, possessed a popular element. Parnell called on the Boards of Guardians, the Corporations, and the Town Commissioners, in places where the 'people' had any effective voice, to rally round the Land and the National Leagues; he achieved remarkable success in the three provinces of the south. This was especially made manifest in the Boards of Guardians, composed largely of farmers of substance, and in which the _ex-officio_ guardians had little real power; these bodies set a crusade against the landed gentry on foot; marked them out for plunder in many ways; encouraged 'boycotting' and defiance of the law; gave a free rein to rebellious utterances of many kinds; and denounced Irish 'landlordism' and British rule in Ireland, as fiercely as they had been denounced at Land and National League gatherings.[181] The same phenomena appeared in many of the corporate and inferior towns: the Corporation of Dublin indulged in anti-British threats and speeches; the Corporation of Limerick refused to pay a lawful tax; the Corporation of Cork proclaimed itself supreme in a 'rebel' city; the example was generally followed in the lesser towns of the south; in short, these bodies became centres of sedition, socialism, and resistance to the law, and widely disseminated their pernicious teaching. In fact, they made themselves agencies of the Land and the National Leagues; at the same time, in numerous instances, they set the authority of the Local Government Board at naught.[182]

The system of Irish local government was obviously so defective, so antiquated, so contrary to the spirit of the age, that several attempts, we have seen, were made, long ago, to reform it. It has now been completely transformed on the principles applied to England and Scotland; the occasion of this transformation was somewhat singular. In 1896 considerable relief was given, in England and Scotland, to the landed interest by a subvention made by the State, which defrayed half the charge of the local county rates, the depression of agriculture being so grievous; the justice of this measure was hardly disputed. But the Report of the Childers Commission, declaring that Ireland was greatly overtaxed, and had been for a long series of years, was published about the same time; the Government, probably because it had made up its mind not to countenance the report in any way, refused to extend the same relief to Ireland, although it was as much required--a decision that simply nothing could warrant. The indignation, however, expressed in Ireland, and the remonstrances even of the Ministerial Press, angrily as it had challenged the findings of the report, before long changed the Government's purpose; it was formally announced, in 1897, that Ireland would obtain the same boon as Great Britain, and, apparently, as a condition of this, that Irish local government was to be reformed. The measure of 1898 was the result of this compromise; the interdependence of two subjects, which have nothing in common, has made it not easy to interpret; but, as we shall see, its authors have provided, with skill, against one of the dangers the change involved, that is, the probability that it might expose the Irish landed gentry to predatory attacks. Before examining the recent law, I venture to make a single remark. The question of the alleviation of the charge of rates, a concession made to Ireland with bad grace, and made to England and Scotland as a matter of course, has nothing to do with the infinitely larger question of the excessive taxation imposed on Ireland; relief in the one case does not imply relief in the other; the two subjects are altogether distinct. It is essential carefully to keep this in mind, for attempts are being made to confuse the two questions, and characteristically to argue that Ireland ought to rest and be thankful, and not to say a word about her overtaxation, because, forsooth, in common with England and Scotland, she has received a.s.sistance as regards her local rates.

The transformation which has been effected in Irish local government has completely changed the old order of things, and is of an extremely democratic character. County government has been taken from the grand juries, and has been extended to bodies known by the name of County Councils, recently formed in Great Britain. The County Councils proper are thirty-two in number, corresponding to the number of the Irish counties; they are popular a.s.semblies in the fullest sense of the word. They are elected by the ratepayers of their districts, who possess the present extravagantly low suffrage; the right of election is also bestowed on women; and the protection of the c.u.mulative vote has been removed; a cottar has the same voting power as a man of forty thousand a year. Any of these voters may have a seat in a County Council; the body, therefore, may be crowded with petty ratepayers; and women also may have seats. Three members of the grand jury, in each county, are ent.i.tled to sit in a County Council, but for a short time only--a provision intended to reconcile the old with the new; the County Councils are given a right to 'co-opt' a few members; and the heads of bodies subordinate to them have the privilege of taking part in their counsels. The rights and the responsibilities of the grand juries have, as a rule, been transferred to the County Councils, except in the instance of criminal injuries, and of determining compensation for these; this jurisdiction, subject to an appeal to a judge of a.s.size, has been properly conferred on the County Court judges, for it is essentially of a judicial nature. The powers of the County Councils thus extend to the management and the supervision of the roads, bridges, and buildings for public purposes comprised within their counties, and also to the regulation of villages and petty towns; but, like the grand juries, they are subject to the same control of the Central Government; they must make 'imperative presentments' like the grand juries; and, as in the instance of the grand juries, subordinate bodies have the initiative in part of their duties. Their powers, however, have been made larger and wider than those of the grand juries; they have been given the right to a.s.sess and levy the poor rate in rural districts, the management of the asylums of the lunatic poor, an authority, in cases of exceptional distress, subject to the permission of the Local Government Board, to sanction relief to poor people out-of-doors, and several other powers of not much importance. It should be added that the County Councils are not restricted in any way by judge's 'fiats' and by 'traverses' as the grand juries were; these securities, such as they were, have disappeared; but their conduct may be controlled to a certain extent by the Superior Courts of Ireland, as that of most public bodies may be, if only through a tedious and costly procedure, and they are more or less under the authority of the Local Government Board.

Six of the princ.i.p.al cities and towns of Ireland, Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Londonderry, and Waterford, have been made distinct counties, with the appellation of County Boroughs. The scheme of County Councils has been applied to these also; the townsmen and townswomen have the same power of voting, and the same democratic suffrage as the counties proper; the borough a.s.semblies may have the same kinds of members; but the t.i.tles of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses have been preserved, in recognition, so to speak, of strictly urban government. These bodies, which, it will be observed, are popular in the widest sense of the word, have the powers of grand juries within their respective spheres; but they retain besides their former administrative powers subject to the control of the Local Government Board; they have thus been changed from narrow and close oligarchies into democracies on the very broadest basis. The County Councils have under them two minor bodies, the Rural District Councils and the Urban District Councils, the characteristics of which may be briefly noticed. The sphere of the authority of the Rural District Council corresponds, for the most part, to the Poor Law Union; these councils are elected and const.i.tuted under the same conditions as the larger councils already described; they are, therefore, mere democracies in considerable numbers. The Rural District Councils are given the powers of the Baronial Presentment Sessions of the Grand Juries, that is, they may initiate proceedings as their predecessors did; they are made the sole guardians of the poor within their districts, the _ex-officio_ guardians having been abolished; their chairmen are members of the County Councils; it may be added here that rating for the poor has been extended generally over the union, not as. .h.i.therto confined to the electoral division and the ward, a questionable provision which will certainly increase the expenditure for the relief of poverty. The sphere of the authority of the Urban District Councils has been made that of the larger towns of Ireland, being sanitary areas within themselves; but power has been taken to increase the number of these towns, and this increase will be probably witnessed. The Urban District Councils resemble, in their mode of election and their const.i.tution, the other a.s.semblies, that is, they are democracies to the fullest extent; but they retain the names of Corporate or Town Commissioners towns, and of mayors, aldermen, and burgesses where they possessed these before. The powers of the Urban District Councils are those of the grand juries within the towns, except as respects the larger public buildings, which were formerly charged on 'the county at large;'

these councils levy and a.s.sess the poor rate within their districts; and they retain the powers of urban government they formerly possessed. The Local Government Board has authority, also, over the Rural District and the Urban District Councils.

The entire system of Irish local government has thus been placed on an extremely democratic basis, subject, however, to partial control by the Central Government. This revolution, for it has been nothing less, was obviously liable to be attended by the many mischiefs inseparable from a sudden transfer of enormous powers to local a.s.semblies of the most popular type, to maladministration, waste, and extravagance, and, as especially would be the case in Ireland, to violent or insidious attacks on the landed gentry. The late measure has provided against these evils, if not completely or adequately, with ingenuity and skill. The relief of Irish agriculture was its first financial object; to effect this the county cess and the poor rate have been consolidated into a single charge; and half of this is to be defrayed by the State and appropriated to the relief of agricultural lands, towns and lands, within munic.i.p.al limits, being excepted. The subvention is not to extend to sums payable in respect of criminal injuries, nor to sums payable in respect of extra police in disturbed districts; these charges are properly to be borne by local areas as before. The relief afforded is an annual sum of about 700,000; it is divided in tolerably equal shares between the owners and the occupiers of the soil, that is, between the landlords and tenants of Ireland; it is characteristic of Radical clamour, that a boon, the justice of which could not be disputed, was denounced as an 'infamous job' for the behoof of the Irish landed gentry. A powerful check has been placed on extravagance and waste, and on attempts to injure property in land, exposed, we have seen, to undoubted dangers. The relief afforded was calculated on the local expenditure for 1897, in the words of the law, 'the standard year;' it was regularly to be one-half of this sum. Should the local expenditure, therefore, in subsequent years, be in excess of that of the standard year, the proportionate value of the relief would fall; should it be a lesser amount, the value would rise. A strong restraint was thus imposed on attempts recklessly to job and waste local funds, and notably to plunder Irish landlords; but this restriction only applies to agricultural lands; it does not extend to property in towns; and it is difficult to say that it will always prove effective against democratic sentiment, pa.s.sion, and greed. The extent of the relief afforded to Irish landlords differs widely as between landlords of different cla.s.ses of tenants; landlords of mere cottars will get very little; landlords of farmers of substance will get much more; but it is unnecessary here to enlarge on this special subject.[183]

This sweeping measure, in my judgment at least, might have been better framed to carry out its policy. Like much of the legislation of the Imperial Parliament, it has been fas.h.i.+oned too closely on the English model; it gives to a poor and backward country, not trained in self-government, local inst.i.tutions naturally adapted only to an opulent and well-ordered country accustomed for centuries to local liberties.

Having regard to the peculiar state of Ireland, it might have made the powers of local government it conferred larger, but it ought not to have been as purely democratic as it is; and it ought to have been accompanied by safeguards it does not possess. I would have been disposed to give the Irish County Councils a right to take evidence for private Bills on the spot; this, if transmitted to the Irish Privy Council, and considered by it, might be made the basis of reports by that body, which could be turned into Acts of Parliament, by a summary process, thus getting rid of great and useless expense, and silencing one of the few real arguments in favour of Home Rule. I would also have allowed the County Councils of different counties, in matters in which they had a common interest, say, in the drainage of some of the great Irish rivers, to carry out together public works of this kind, and to a.s.sess and levy rates for the purpose if, on consideration, this was deemed expedient; at present they have no authority like this; and such a power would, I think, be for the general good of Ireland. The County Councils, too, I believe, might be given a deliberative voice, in cases they have not at present; for example, should the rate-payers of any county make a demand for sectarian education, within its area, and declare themselves ready to pay a rate for it, the County Council should have a right to entertain the project, and to report on it to the Central Government. And I am convinced that members of the County Councils ought to have some seats on the Local Government Board, and on other boards now filled by the Castle bureaucracy; this would introduce a popular element into these bodies, and, in many ways, would be of real advantage. On the other hand, in the election and the const.i.tution of the County and other Councils, democracy has simply been let run riot; and the resulting evils have already been made manifest. Illiterate persons ought not to have been qualified to be electors; the single should not have replaced the c.u.mulative vote, property being thus deprived of its legitimate weight; above all, as is evident, security should have been taken that the landed gentry should have a proper representation on the County Councils. The authority, too, of the Superior Courts over all these a.s.semblies should have been made more effective and less costly than it is at present; and that of the Local Government Board should have been better defined and increased. In all this province the checks possessed by the Central Government over these local democracies are not, I think, sufficient.

It is impossible, I have remarked, to say with certainty what the end of this social revolution will be; but some of the results are, even now, apparent. There has, as yet, been little tendency in the local boards to waste, or to attempts to despoil the landed gentry; the check in this respect is of great force; but no one, I repeat, can predict what may be done under the influence of democratic sympathies, especially should the existing agitation acquire increased strength in Ireland. Some of the councils have been very fairly managed; a few others have been badly administered; as a rule, much time has been misspent in irrelevant talk; there has been a good deal of squabbling with the Local Government Board; but, on the whole, the local business of the counties and towns has been conducted as reasonably well as could be expected in the case of a new and immense experiment. But the consequences of giving raw democracies great and sudden power have already been made but too manifest, as persons, who knew Ireland, foresaw would happen. In parts of Ulster representatives of the landed gentry have been elected to the County Councils; property in these has still legitimate influence. But in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, this order of men has been all but completely shut out from these boards; the land is not represented at all; this is an absolutely unnatural position of affairs, pregnant with many ills to the community as a whole. It is not only that the landed gentry have been deprived of an influence they ought to possess, in a society in any degree well ordered; this change has a tendency to make them more and more, what they have largely been made already, a privileged cla.s.s without duties, akin to the old seigneurie of France, a state of things of which Tocqueville has powerfully described the evils. In the southern provinces, too, the new democracies, composed of Catholic 'Nationalists,' by large majorities, have driven loyal, and especially Protestant, men and women from local offices they had filled with credit, and this too at a considerable charge on the rates, a clear proof how no restraints can be wholly effective. But the main feature in the conduct of the County and other Councils is that in most parts of Ireland they have followed the advice given by Parnell to their weaker forerunners; they have made themselves agencies of the United Irish League, as boards before them were agencies of the Land and the National Leagues, and they have given but too ample proof of disaffection, disloyalty, and hatred of British rule. In some counties, the councils seized the court houses, and refused light and fire to the Superior and the County Court judges. Throughout the South of Ireland most of the boards vied with each other in wild expressions of sympathy with the Boers, and of hopes that disaster would befall the British army; many gave free voice to frankly rebellious language; many denounced Irishmen being recruited for the British army. Nor did these sinister exhibitions end here; some of these bodies went out of their way to sneer at their aged sovereign, when she paid last year her last visit to the Irish sh.o.r.es, to question her motives, to speak all kinds of evil; a few even refused to say a word of regret for her death, nay, indulged in language of scarcely veiled insult. These councils, in a word, in a number of instances, have shown a marked resemblance to the a.s.semblies of the Communes of Jacobin France, indignantly held up to execration by Burke; they have been petty nests of seditious agitation and clamour. It is at least well that this manner of men has not succeeded, in the great statesman's language, in 'ascending from parochial tyranny to federal anarchy' and have warned us what would be the nature of a Home Rule Parliament.

This scheme of local government must be given a trial; but ultimately it will have to be reformed, in a Conservative sense, if things in Ireland are not to be left upside down.[184] I turn to the subject of Irish education, which has been lately attracting much public attention.

University education is the most prominent part of this question; but, in order to understand it, we must briefly consider the history of Irish education in all its branches. The first scheme of primary education in Ireland, of which we have a record--I pa.s.s over the traditions of the Middle Ages--was due to the policy of Henry VIII.; he procured an Act from the Irish Parliament, to the effect that elementary schools should be set up in different Irish parishes; but, true to the ideal of Tudor statesmen--an ideal, however, which he did not always pursue--he required that these should be 'English schools,' to teach the Irish poor 'the English language.' Many years pa.s.sed before these schools were found beyond the borders of the Pale; but, as the march of conquest advanced, they existed in many Irish parishes; there were more than five hundred of them in 1810, the largest number probably they ever attained. These schools were originally intended to be open without distinction of creed; but, under the conditions of Irish history, they necessarily became confined to the lower Protestant cla.s.ses; they were under the control of the clergy of the Established Church, and Catholic children were kept away from them. Elizabeth founded another cla.s.s of schools, in part elementary, in part of a higher type; these were known as the Diocesan Irish Schools; but there seem never to have been more than sixteen of these; and they, too, became exclusively Protestant. To these schools should be added 'the English Erasmus Smith Schools,' as they were called, foundations grafted, so to speak, on grammar schools established by a wealthy Cromwellian settler; at one time they were more than one hundred in number; and if not wholly, they were nearly confined to Protestant children. A series of Reports of Commissions and other records show that the education afforded in all these schools was not what it ought to have been; but this was to be expected in the case of a country where Protestant ascendency was supreme, where all administration was selfish and corrupt, and where the schools were the monopoly of a fraction of the people only. As to the education of the Irish Catholic poor in these centuries, it was discouraged, and ultimately prohibited by the penal code; the Catholic child could not learn the rudiments in his own land; but in spite of this, 'hedge schools,' a significant name, grew up, in hundreds, throughout the country, in which, to adopt the words of Davis, a man of genius--

'Still crouching 'neath the sheltering hedge, or stretched on mountain fern, The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.'

As may, however, be supposed the instruction afforded in these schools was usually bad; throughout the eighteenth century and a part of the nineteenth, the young of Catholic Ireland were brought up in ignorance. In 1733 an odious experiment was made, and continued for a long period, to cause education to wean the Catholic child from his faith. An inst.i.tution, called the Charter School, was established; the object of its founders was to make 'the young of the Papists' Protestant, by attracting them to seminaries where they were kept apart from their parents and priests, boarded, lodged, and handed over to Protestant tradesmen; millions were spent in furthering a detestable policy, which literally set up Mammon against G.o.d. The Charter Schools, however, completely failed; they never had more than fourteen hundred pupils, and they became wretched Dotheboys Halls where cruel and pampered Squeerses, eating up funds set apart for education such as it was, starved and ill-treated children victims of every kind of disease.

When the partial relaxation of the penal laws allowed the children of the Irish Catholics to be taught the rudiments, the 'Christian Brothers' began to found their schools, under the sanction of a Bull of Pius VI.; these schools, sectarian, like the genius of the Irish people, have, though receiving no endowment from the State, grown from small beginnings into a number of excellent Catholic schools. The Quakers in Ireland had established a few elementary schools before the Union; and so had the Presbyterians of Ulster. The Charter Schools lingered down to the year 1832; they disappeared when their subsidies ceased; but the 'Incorporated Irish Society' is in possession of the lands they once held, and it supports a number of good Protestant schools. Primary education, however, in Ireland remained very backward; the Protestant schools did not flourish; the Catholic 'hedge schools' continued until the nineteenth century had far advanced. Attempts were made to promote Irish primary education, in different ways, after the Union; a Board of Commissioners of Education was appointed, and made valuable reports; but these efforts were of little avail for the benefit at least of the Catholic young; the schools thus established were all Protestant; and the evangelical movement, which was then powerful, made them proselytising with scarcely a single exception, a danger which the example of the Charter Schools had especially made the Catholic Irish priesthood dread. An inst.i.tution, however, called the 'Kildare Place Schools' had, for a time, considerable success; these schools were thrown open to children of all creeds, and had the high approval of O'Connell himself; but it was one of the rules that the Bible should be read in the schools; they became proselytising in no doubtful sense, and ultimately they were tabooed by the Catholic priesthood. Primary education in Ireland was in this state, when the subject was taken up by Mr. Stanley, the Chief Secretary for Ireland of Lord Grey, and, in after years, the 'Rupert of Debate.' He founded in 1831-34 what has ever since been known as the 'National System of Education' of an elementary kind in Ireland. The principles on which he proceeded were in accord with the somewhat shallow Liberalism of the day, but, it must be added, with the ideas of many enlightened Irishmen.

Primary education was to be endowed by the State, but it was to be divided into two parts: secular instruction was to be given in the new schools to children a.s.sembled together to learn, and that without distinction of creed; but religious instruction was to be given to children kept apart, Protestants and Catholics being completely separate, by the pastors of their respective communions. By these means it was hoped that a sound system of primary education would be formed; that proselytising would be made impossible; and that the youth of the warring races and faiths of Ireland, under the influence of a common teaching, would be made gradually to forget the animosities of the past. The National Schools were to be the Lethe of Irish discords.

I can barely glance at the chequered history of the inst.i.tution which was thus established. The 'National System,' the name long in common use, was angrily condemned by the clergy of the Established Church of Ireland, and by a majority, perhaps, of the laity; this opposition was partly due to the spirit of an ascendency that would not brook equality; but it was largely to be ascribed to a higher motive. The new system, it was argued, cut education in two; the separation of what is secular from what is religious practically postpones what is divine to the human; and this is especially the case under the arrangements in force, for religious instruction in the schools may be a mere accident. The Irish Protestant clergy, and many other Protestants, have never taken to the National Schools; their sincerity is proved by the fact that a 'Church Education Society' exists, which, though depending on voluntary subscriptions alone, supports nearly two hundred exclusively Protestant schools. As for the Presbyterians of Ireland, the National system of education fell in with their views; its 'Liberalism' was congenial to them; but though schools of this type have flourished in Ulster, the Presbyterians have given a great deal of trouble to the Commissioners charged to carry out the law, and have shown much animosity to the Catholic Irish. The Irish Catholic priesthood at first accepted the National system almost with grat.i.tude; it gave their flocks a rudimentary instruction they were much in need of; it seemed to provide against the proselytising they feared above all things; and during some years the heads of their Church in Ireland, for the most part not of the Ultramontane faith, were not indisposed to welcome a compromise. By degrees, however, opposition grew up in Catholic Ireland against the system; and, it must be allowed, not without reason. The Catholic element on the Commission was much too weak; the purely secular instruction in the schools was made partly religious, for books of a Protestant complexion found their way into them; a cry of Protestant proselytising was raised; and the National system was solemnly condemned in 1850, at the great Catholic Synod of Thurles, a sentence, however, which had no effect on the Government. But the real grievances of the Irish Catholics, in this matter, have nearly all been removed; the Catholic Commissioners have been made equal in number with the Presbyterian and Protestant; secular instruction in the schools has again been made strictly secular; attempts at proselytising have long been rendered impossible; it should be added--and this is very important--the Catholic priesthood have become the managers of a large majority of the schools. The system has certainly struck deep roots in Ireland; there are now nearly 9000 National Schools, endowed with about 1,300,000 by the State, and teaching nearly 800,000 pupils; they are supported by model and training schools, and have a large staff of competent teachers; the instruction they afford, if not remarkable, is, on the whole, sufficiently good. It may fairly be said that the National system has been a beneficent influence of the greatest value; light has shone on a people that once sate in darkness. The system, however, has become, insensibly, but greatly, changed; the National Schools have long been, for the most part, sectarian, that is, composed of Protestant or of Catholic children; the 'mixed' schools, as they are called, are comparatively few. But the main principle of the system still is in force; the instruction given in the schools, when the pupils sit together, is strictly secular; and this is secured by a conscience clause; the Bible cannot be read, in school hours, even in a Protestant school; no Catholic school can have a Catholic emblem. The religious instruction given in the schools is hardly what it ought to be, especially in the case of the Protestant schools; it must be added that the hope of their founders that they would bridge over the gulf of discords in Ireland has not been, in the slightest degree, realised.

The Irish are, naturally, a religious people; their history, a long conflict of races and faiths, has, necessarily, made them intensely sectarian. The system of education, of which I have traced the outlines, was certainly not well designed for them; it would have been severely condemned by Burke, the deepest of thinkers on the affairs of Ireland. And though the National system has had a real measure of success, it owes this, in the main, to the immense subvention it receives from the State; it has little or no support from voluntary aid; an attempt to impose an education rate on Ireland would be a failure, would not improbably wreck the system. Nor is this in harmony with genuine Irish sentiment; one of the most conclusive proofs is that National education has become, to a great extent, sectarian; the 'Christian Brothers' and the 'Church Education Society' schools, sustained by voluntary effort alone, and overweighted in the race by the endowed schools of the State, show how strong is Irish sectarian feeling. The clergy, too, of the late Established Church, and a considerable body of their communion, remain hostile to the National Schools; and though the Catholic priesthood have made them, to a great extent, their own, and avail themselves of the advantages they afford, they are hardly in heartfelt sympathy with them.

Nor can it be denied that the conscientious objections to the National system have real weight; the system, if not irreligious, is, we may say, neutral; it does not make religion an essential part of school life. It would, nevertheless, I believe, be exceedingly unwise to disturb a system which, on the whole, has for many years had excellent results in Ireland.

The opposition to it is not strong; the children of the humbler cla.s.ses freely avail themselves of it, and that with the full consent of their parents. Nor is the conscientious objection of much force in the case of schools which are only day schools, and in which the rudiments alone are taught; this is not the case of education of the higher kind, in which this objection is perhaps decisive; and it cannot be said that the National Schools have, in any sense, impaired the religion of the Irish people.[185]

I pa.s.s from elementary to schools of a secondary kind in Ireland. The Diocesan Schools of Elizabeth were nearly all secondary schools; but they were never numerous, and have all but disappeared. The two first Stuarts made an attempt to establish secondary education in Ireland on a larger scale. They founded the 'Free Royal Schools,' as they have been called, now seen at Armagh, Cavan, Dungannon, Portora, and Raphoe; they endowed them with lands perhaps worth in our day, 6000 a year; they looked forward to a time when they might rival Eton, Winchester, and the great public schools of England. Erasmus Smith established three considerable 'grammar schools,' and granted valuable estates for their support; a tolerably large number of secondary schools was also founded, from time to time, by benefactors of the dominant race in Ireland: of these Kilkenny College, a seminary created by the House of Ormond, which reared Swift and Berkeley, was the most conspicuous. These schools, though often nominally open to different creeds, became, nevertheless, in the eighteenth century, under the Protestant ascendency, supreme in the land, restricted to the young of the Protestant caste; they felt the effects of monopoly, and of the corruption prevailing in the State; the education they afforded was, for the most part, bad; their governing bodies and masters were often grasping and selfish. After the relaxation of the penal code, the Irish Catholics began to found secondary schools; their exertions were, in a high degree, praiseworthy; and though these schools received no support from the State, some of them have done really excellent work. A number, too, of secondary schools were established in Ulster, for the most part for Presbyterian uses; some of these are sectarian, some open to all faiths