TOPICS OF THE DAY.
FEDERATION FOR THE BRITISH ISLANDS. ND if so what do you think the consequence of that would be ? Would it not be confusion ? Would it not be utter confusion? Would it not make England like Switzerland, one county against another as one canton of the Swiss is against another? And if so what would that produce but an absolute desolation—an absolute desolation to the nation?"
These words were spoken by Cromwell at one of the meetings of the Council of the Army. When that seven- teenth-century Conference was discussing a vast system of Constitutional change (including, curiously enough, the Referendum, or, as they called it in those days, an Agreement of the people on fundamentals), it touched also the question of " Home-rule all round."—The problem of the unit of internal government is never far away from such discussions.—Cromwell as a rule took very little share in these abstract debates, but the suggestion of national disintegration brought the first and greatest of Unionists in a white-heat to the Council table. Truly the words we have quoted have a significance for our own day. It is rumoured, though whether on good authority we cannot tell, that the Conference has already begun to discuss "Home-rule all round, including Imperial federation." Mr. Birrell certainly introduced this double-barrelled engine of destruction into his speech, and the context pointed to the fact that its sinister shadow had been thrown across the deliberations. Mr. Moreton Frewen in a letter which we publish to-day takes us to task almost as traitors to our country for daring to stand up against the notion that we can best keep the Empire together by blowing the United Kingdom into smithereens. We have also unhappily seen in other quarters signs of that perturba- tion which sometimes is the preliminary to surrender. For example, the able editor of the Observer in the last issue of that paper, instead of, as we should have imagined, treating the notion of " Home-rule all round " as absolutely impossible, gives us a courteous reproof for our con- temptuous reference to the matter. Perhaps we are doing him wrong ; but one would almost judge from the tone he adopts that he is ready to consider the suggestion sympathetically. If we believed with Mr. Moreton Frewen that the nation and the Empire could only be preserved by breaking up the United Kingdom, we should, of course, adopt that policy. Since, however, we believe that the dissolu- tion of the Union and restoration of the Heptarchy, plus some plan for forcing a premature scheme of federa- tion upon the Empire, would mean our ruin at home and oversea—a weltering political chaos in which one by one would disappear every part of that proud heritage which is ours and our children's, and of which these islands are the special trustees—we intend to fight this proposal to the death. We believe that it must mean internal and external confusion, at home the destruction of national strength, and therefore of national safety, and oversea the disintegration of the Empire,—" an absolute desolation to the nation." Some day no doubt—it may be a hundred or eighty or only sixty years hence—when the great self- governing portions of the Empire have obtained a popula- tion and a fiscal strength in some sense comparable to our own, the edifice may be built of a closer political union based upon that solid foundation, which, thank God, we already possess, of a common citizenship and a common Throne, and w hat we shall no doubt have before very long, a common system of naval and military defence. To make this splendid dream a reality, however, one thing is essential, and that is to keep inviolate in health and wealth the central unit,—the United Kingdom. Mr. Kipling speaks with a poet's insight of how " the Abbey makes us we." Could it perform that Imperial task if we demolished its towers, levelled its walls, and set up some pinchbeck imitation of the British Zion—templum et arx—in half-a- dozen divisions of the British Isles ? The several Acts of Union with Wales—it is too often forgotten that in the sixteenth century we made a union with Wales—with Scotland, and with Ireland are the very corner-stones of that concentration of sovereignty and power which has enabled us to found and maintain the British Empire.
We do not believe for a moment that it has ever crossed the minds of the statesmen of the King's oversea dominions to bully the United Kingdom into disintegrating herself in the name of Imperial Federation, or that they believe that such a sacrifice could be for the good of the Empire as a whole. They know that no one here has the slightest desire to constrain them even in the smallest degree, and that they are free nations in a free Empire, as absolutely independent of British control as if they were in theory as well as in fact sovereign communities. While they have still to tame the great forces of Nature, to build their houses, to make their roads, to control their rivers, and to clear their woodlands that the plough may pass, it is only right and natural that the chief burden of the common defence should fall upon the Mother-country, and that with this burden should go also the chief direction of foreign affairs. As soon, however, as the settler's pre- occupation with his war with Nature has abated, the daughter-nations will one by one take up their full share of the burden of defence, and with it their proportionate share in the direction of foreign policy. Meantime the notion that they desire to dictate to us our internal organisation is unthinkable,—the gross and incoherent nightmare of political hypochondriacs. Consider briefly to what lengths the infection of disintegration might lead us if once we began to break up the United Kingdom in order to obtain what is supposed to be a more convenient unit of federation. It is an open secret that there are parties in some of the States of the Australian Commonwealth which regret the policy of unity, and at the moment would if they could retrace their steps. That, no doubt, is a passing phase which has affected almost all Federations. For many years after the founding of the United States there were dangerous and perplexing tendencies towards disintegration, tendencies which when the struggle over slavery came added fuel to the fire. If we break up the United Kingdom in the mad hope of thereby facilitating the federation of the Empire, how are we to meet similar demands from Australia ? And remember that these demands will not stop even at the dissolution of the Commonwealth. What are we to say, for example, if Queensland first asks to federate as a separate unit, and then, with the fissiparous principle let loose, demands to come in not as one but as two States, as North and South Queensland ? As Cromwell saw so well, there would be no end to the business. We should get, like Switzerland in the seventeenth century, "one county against another as one canton of the Swiss is against another." If we once set the fatal example of disunion and disintegration, no man can tell where it will stop. By all means let us prepare in a spirit of moderation, prudence, and good sense for a closer union in the future with the daughter-nations, but let us never sacrifice that wished-for object by a single step in the wrong direction,— the direction of disunion.
We have quoted Cromwell's trumpet-call against a policy of disintegration. We may quote from another hero- statesman of the English-speaking race words of much the same import. When, just before the outbreak of the Civil War, the minds of men in America were in danger of becoming confused by the sophistries of the Separa- tionists, Lincoln put his finger upon the truth in words that deserve to be quoted whenever any English-speaking State is faced by this fatal policy. He spoke with scorn of the " professed lovers of the Union." " In their view, the Union as a family relation would seem to be no regular marriage, but a sort of free-love arrangement to be maintained only on a passional attraction." Turning to another aspect of the problem, he asked a question which is a prophetic answer to the Irish Nationalists when they demand Home-rule from Britain, but insist that they will never make a similar concession to Belfast and the Protestant North. " On what rightful principle may a State, being not more than one fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionately larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way ? "
Before we leave the subject it is worth while to consider for a moment what is the real and ultimate cause of these suggestions of Constitutional revolution involving "Home- rule all round," and some premature and dangerous attempt to snatch the fruit of Imperial unity before it is ripe. The sole cause is the desire of certain politicians to get rid of what is in reality merely an inconvenience,—the worry of Irish disaffection. But Irish disaffection is not to be eradicated in that way. The Irish people, or, to be more correct, the larger section of _them, are restless and politically unhappy, partly from economic causes, and - partly from blunders for which they themselves must bear a proportionate share of blame with the other, divisions of the United Kingdom. There are signs, however, that the economic troubles are dying out, and that Ireland, though her quick-witted people may always seem uneasy bedfellows to the calmer-minded English and Scotch, will in a generation or two become loyal to the Union, or - rather disloyalty will become merely a piece of picturesque archaeology. The political danger from Ireland has passed, and nothing but a certain amount of party incon- venience remains. To risk the whole fabric of the Union and of the Empire in order to make the party.politician's path a little more pleasant, and to prevent him from feeling unduly tempted to sacrifice the interests of the country to Parliamentary tactics, would be the wildest and most ruinous act of folly ever committed by a free people. When it is proposed to do such things as we are apparently now going to be asked to do, the answer of the country should be : " We are not going to risk destroying the State in order that you may find it easier to pursue your game of official catch-as-catch-can in comfort."
We began with a quotation from Cromwell. We will end with one. After his naive remark, " I had rather be overrun with a Cavalierish interest than a Scotch interest ; I had rather be overrun with a Scotch interest than an Irish interest, for I think of all this is the most dangerous," Cromwell added : " If they shall be able to carry on their work they will make this the most miserable people in the earth." Truly, if our Constitution-mongers carry on their work of disintegrating the United Kingdom in the name of uniting the Empire, they will make us " the most miserable people in the earth." As Cromwell ends, such a danger " should awaken all Englishmen."
Previous page
