MR. COURTNEY'S VIEW ON IRELAND.
NEXT to Lord Hartington's speech, Mr. Courtney's speech at Liskeard on Thursday is much the most important of the addresses of the week : and that for two reasons,— .first, because he insists on his argument against Home- rule exclusively on the evidence of its injuriousness to Ireland, waiving entirely the results on the United Kingdom ; and next, because he points out that if all the very grave and weighty reasons which support this view of the case are to be set aside, the scheme of the Government ought to go a great deal further than it does, and to satisfy the cravings of the Irish for a separate national existence more frankly and generously. We are heartily in sympathy with Mr. Courtney in both his positions, and have, indeed, taken up both positions from the first. We do not mean, of course, that we have never referred to the disastrous consequences to the rest of the United Kingdom involved in the proposals of the Government, for it is impossible for a journalist to exclude altogether any important aspect of a great question. But we have always taken our main stand on the moral disaster to Ireland of the policy pro- posed ; and we have said from the very first that if the reasons which are supposed to overbalance these considerations are sufficient at all, they are sufficient to justify something much larger than the Government propose to do ; nay, that there would be legs ground for fear and more for hope,—if one can speak thus of a matter where the preponderance of fear over hope is so overwhelming as we conceive it to be in this case, —in sweeping away the irritating incidents of the proposed arrangement, than in passing it with the intricate and certainly vexatious conditions introduced in the Government scheme.
Mr. Courtney put the grounds for supposing that the step in contemplation will most seriously injure Ireland with his usual vigour and lucidity. What is it the Irish people want ? On the supposition that we can really trust their chief leaders as true spokesmen of their wishes,—and if we cannot so trust them, the argument for Home-rule disappears at once,—they want to foster Irish industries, to stop Irish emigration, to make of Ireland a separate nation, and a nation of some significance and magnitude. What is it that they look forward to as the chief means of attaining those ends ? Accord- ing to the same authority, they hope to do it by " pro- tecting " Irish industries, by stopping Irish emigration, and as a means to the latter end, by relaxing freely, as some of the Unions in the West of Ireland have already largely relaxed, the conditions of out-door relief. These are the most urgent of the avowed objects of the national leaders. We cannot doubt for a moment that if Ireland were really left to herself, she would at once begin to impose heavy rates on property, in aid of the poor ; to impose heavy Protective duties on imports, in aid of trade ; and to discourage emigration by every means in her power. The first and last of these aims would be within the power of the Irish Parliament under the Government scheme, while the second would not. But it is quite certain that the extending poverty and misery which would result from the policy of largely increasing the poor-rates and relaxing the conditions of outdoor relief, would be laid by the Irish at the doors not of that policy itself, but of the restrictions under which we had granted them the liberty to pursue that policy ; that they would declare that it was the refusal of the right to settle their own tariff, and our exaction of so large a tribute from Ireland, which were ruining Ireland ; and that all the old fury against England would rise again to the highest point, so soon as the Irish discovered that, far from prospering under their new policy, they were growing poorer and poorer every day. No observant politician doubts that one of the very first results of Home-rule would be a panic among the capitalists of Ireland, a rush of capital from the island, a great increase of the burdens on property, a great increase of the poor-rates, and official discouragement to emigration. And no reasonable man can doubt that this would result in poverty, anger, restlessness, bitterness of spirit, which would be quite sure to find its vent in a new wrath against England, for which wrath, under the scheme of the Government, it would be only too easy to find a popular excuse.
We hold, then, with Mr. Courtney that we have no right to try an experiment which will certainly fail in making Ireland prosperous, and which, because it will fail in making Ireland prosperous, will certainly succeed in re-exciting all the old animosity between the British and the Irish peoples, and in stimulating all the evil passions of which the relations of the Nationalist majority to the Conservative minority in Ireland already afford far too much proof. It seems impossible to justify in the interests of Ireland a step which means in the immediate future a great loss of wealth, and a great fury at the causes to which, in the ignorant popular imagination, that loss of wealth will inevitably be ascribed. But if it be,—as it certainly is not,—worth while to run this truly fearful risk at all, then surely it should be run, as Mr. Courtney urges, with the courage and disinterested generosity which such a situation requires,— that is, without leaving any causes for petty irritation or reproach which we can by any possibility remove. If we are to grant the aspirations of the Irish to their own hurt, let us do it at least with some completeness. Let us permit them to fix their own tariff, however mistakenly we may expect them to use that right. Let us not exact from them a tribute such as is sure to be the ground of recrimina- tion and complaint. Let us leave them no excuse for saying that it is our greediness, and not their blundering, which is causing their sufferings. Let us compensate liberally the class to whom we feel that our protection is pledged, and not offer them little more than a third of what we really-owe. Let us do all that honour demands of us with a liberal spirit, set Ireland as free as possible from English control, and then, if the experiment breaks down,—as, of course, it will,—we may at least expect that a reasonable number of the Irish people will know why it has failed,—namely, because it was from the first an experiment which never ought to have been made. But at one and the same time, to allow the Irish to make a hopeless experiment, and to provide them with what will seem to them a sufficient excuse for laying the responsibility for its failure upon our- selves, is surely as shortsighted a policy as can well be imagined in such a situation as the present. Of course, we are utterly opposed to the granting of all these fatal gifts to Ireland. But we do say, with Mr. Courtney, that if they are to be granted, they should be so granted as to let the Irish try, without any plausible pretence for attributing the failure to us, the fatal experiment on which they are bent.
It is one very important feature in Mr. Courtney's speech, that it will, we think, help to bring home to Scotch, and Welsh, and English Home-rulers, how very different is the Home-rule of which they approve, from the Home-rule for which the Irish ask. They desire Home-rule in the sense of ample local self-government ; the Irish wish for it in the sense of separate nationality, which neither Englishmen, nor Scotch- men, nor Welshmen would take, if you offered it them, re- garding as they do their nationality as already determined and fixed in the most satisfactory way. But the confusion between these two completely different senses of Home-rule is wide- spread and deplorable. We do not hesitate to say that if the Government carry the country with them, they will so carry it because the electors of Great Britain are wholly unable to distinguish in their minds between the kind of Home-rule
which they want for themselves, and the kind of Home-rale with which they are willing, at the request of Ireland, to blast the destiny of that unfortunate island.
Previous page
