Present Irish Questions Part 8

If the picture I have drawn of Ireland is correct in outline, there is much of evil omen in her present condition. The ancient divisions of race and faith, the most distinctive feature in her social structure, are at least as deeply marked as they have been for a century; bad legislation has made them deeper and wider. Catholic Ireland remains disaffected to British rule, despite efforts of conciliation and concessions that cannot be justified; no cla.s.s in the community is completely satisfied; discontent rankles in the hearts of the landed gentry. The Union, indeed, has been successfully maintained; the frightful agrarian disorder of 1881-89 no longer exists. But the Union is not permanently a.s.sured as long as the Liberal party and eighty Irish members demand Home Rule, and the over-representation of Ireland continues; the conspiracy of the Land and the National Leagues has revived in that of the United Irish League; and this seeks to compa.s.s the ends of its prototypes by obstruction in Parliament and detestable socialistic tyranny. And the frame of Irish society has been well-nigh shattered; ruins have been made, nothing solid has been put in their place. An aristocracy, long waning, has been practically destroyed, and can no longer be a support of the State; the bureaucracy of the Castle reigns in its stead; but this is essentially a weak Government; it can maintain order, but has no hold on the people; the Irish democracy, to which power has been transferred, regards it with a dislike and a contempt it does not try to conceal. The country has made hardly any progress of late years; if some improvement in the state of the middle cla.s.ses appears, agriculture, its leading industry, has perceptibly declined. In by far the most important of Irish social relations, those connected with the land, a revolution has taken place; a huge if a veiled confiscation has gone on; the landed gentry have been shamefully wronged; the occupiers of the soil have been most unduly favoured; yet both cla.s.ses declare they have been ill-treated, notably the last. And the Irish land system has been turned upside down, with consequences disastrous and far-reaching; the landlord has been cut off from his estate; the tenant has been encouraged in thriftlessness and waste by law; the land has been bound in a ruinous mortmain, like that which existed under the penal code, and subjected to demoralising litigation, breeding a war of cla.s.s; capital and fruitful enterprise turn away from it. And, at the same time, in order to lessen these evils, recourse has been had to remedies that are perhaps worse; the system of so-called 'land purchase' has been devised; the result has been to create a cla.s.s of peasant owners reproducing the nearly extinct middleman, and, above all, to arouse a cry for the 'compulsory purchase' of the rented lands of Ireland, an act of wholesale spoliation unjust and disastrous alike. In the position of affairs we now see in Ireland, the stability of society has been rudely shaken; the sense of the security of property has well-nigh disappeared; the sanct.i.ty of contracts has no respect; the pillars on which order and prosperity rest have been injured; violent revolution has been arrested, indeed, but revolutionary and socialistic ideas spread far and wide. And will any impartial inquirer deny that these untoward results may be largely ascribed to the faulty legislation of late years, and to a system of administration s.h.i.+fty and feeble? And what judgment is to be pa.s.sed on the thoughtless optimism too common in opinion with respect to Ireland? Meanwhile, reforms imperatively required are not even attempted; they are pa.s.sed over or postponed to some more convenient season. The time surely has come to look things in Ireland straight in the face; to see if statesmans.h.i.+p cannot do something really effective for her good. This end a.s.suredly will not be attained by breaking up the Three Kingdoms under the guise of Home Rule, or by promoting a confiscation the worst Ireland has ever seen; still less will it be attained by the quackery in legislation and administration too apparent of late years; nor can trifling and foolish optimism blind the eyes of intelligent thinkers to facts. Ireland can only expect to make progress by ruling the community on the just and sound principles to which long experience has given its sanction; and this consummation can only be the slow result of time.

APPENDIX

THE IRISH GOVERNMENT BILL, 1886.

ARRANGEMENT OF CLAUSES.

Part I.

_Legislative Authority._

CLAUSE

1. Establishment of Irish Legislature.

2. Powers of Irish Legislature.

3. Exceptions from powers of Irish Legislature.

4. Restrictions on powers of Irish Legislature.

5. Prerogatives of Her Majesty as to Irish Legislative Body.

6. Duration of the Irish Legislative Body.

_Executive Authority._

7. Const.i.tution of the Executive Authority.

8. Use of Crown Lands by Irish Government.

_Const.i.tution of Legislative Body._

9. Const.i.tution of Irish Legislative Body.

10. First order.

11. Second order.

_Finance._

12. Taxes and separate Consolidated Fund.

13. Annual contributions from Ireland to Consolidated Fund of United Kingdom.

14. Collection and application of Customs and Excise duties in Ireland.

15. Charges on Irish Consolidated Fund.

16. Irish Church Fund.

17. Public loans.

18. Additional aid in case of war.

19. Money bills and votes.

20. Exchequer Division and revenue actions.

_Police._

21. Police.

PART II.

_Supplemental Provisions._

Powers of Her Majesty.

22. Powers over certain lands reserved to Her Majesty.

Legislative Body.

23. Veto by first order of Legislative Body, how overruled.

24. Cesser of power of Ireland to return members of Parliament.

Decision of Const.i.tutional Questions.

25. Const.i.tutional questions to be submitted to Judicial Committee.

Lord-Lieutenant.

26. Office of Lord-Lieutenant.

Judges and Civil Servants.

27. Judges to be removable only on address.

28. Provisions as to Judges and other persons having salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund.

29. As to persons holding Civil Service appointments.

30. Provision for existing pensions and superannuation allowances.

_Transitory Provisions._

31. Transitory provisions in Schedule.

_Miscellaneous._

32. Post office and savings banks.

33. Audit.

34. Application of parliamentary law.

35. Regulations for carrying Act into effect.

36. Saving of powers of House of Lords.

37. Saving of rights of Parliament.

38. Continuance of existing laws, courts, officers, etc.

39. Mode of alteration of Act.

40. Definitions.

41. Short t.i.tle of Act.

SCHEDULES.