TOPICS OF THE DAY.
SCOTLAND AND THE NINTH CLAUSE.
T"plot thickens. Next week is to be the great week of the debate. The Ninth Clause comes on for dis- cussion, and the Ninth Clause deals with the Irish repre- sentation in the Imperial Parliament. If the Scotch are wise, they will not listen for a moment to the plea that the representative principle is to be tampered with in the manner suggested by that clause, whether it be only for a time, or whether it be as a permanent arrangement. If the temptation to intrigue be once deliberately introduced into our Constitution, no one can tell where it will end ; and those stand to suffer most by it whose local interests are most unique and least strong in numerical equivalents of representative power. The Scotch Members number only seventy in the House of Commons. They are per- fectly well aware that if they wish to retain the powerful hold which they have long had on English, Colonial, and Imperial affairs, they cannot safely aspire to Scotch Home- rule. It would not be worth their while in the least. They would shut themselves out of a large world, and shut them- selves into a small. Think what you may of the federal principle, if the Scotch Members once dissever their interests from those of the English Members, they will suffer a great deal more than they will gain. To introduce the petty distinctions of local origin and purpose into the questions affecting the United Kingdom, can never answer for a population so relatively weak as that of Scotland. The Scotch do not want to be shut out from the control even of exclusively English affairs, much less of Colonial and foreign affairs. They know what it is to be citizens of a great Power, and what to be citizens of a small. If these Jealous local rivalries are to be introduced, the Scotch will be the first to suffer by them. To take one of the most insignificant of the various consequences,—Do their artistic, scientific, and literary men want to have the British Museum cut-up into English and Scotch departments, even if the consequence were that the Scotch department were to be transferred to Edinburgh P That is a typical instance of the kind of question which would arise under Home-rule all round. The Scotch desire, no doubt,—and very justly desire,—to get their strictly local Scotch interests better understood and attended to. They do not want to have English bunglers making merry with their law of multiplepoinding, or the other details of Scotch law. But they do not want to pay for better security on matters of this kind, the frightful penalty of being shut-out from all the greater issues of English legislation, and from the chance of shaping our Colonial and Imperial affairs as only the citizens of the richer and more powerful section of the Kingdom will ever have a chance of shaping them. What the Scotch really want is to get their own private business,—their own strictly local business,— managed by competent local tribunals, without Scotchmen being ruled out of the English political world, which would cost them a great deal more than they could afford to give. They know perfectly well that if the federalising tendency is to be developed, the so-called Imperial power will be necessarily swayed in a vastly greater degree by English wealth and influence, than it ever can be by Scotch enterprise and ithrewdness ; and that it is the worst thing that can happen to the weaker element of the Kingdom to have the question constantly raised whether a man is Scotch or English, whether he has the right to speak for the greater world, or only for the less. Now, the Ninth Clause, which is the great subject of next week's political " compartment " of the Home-rule Bill, raises this issue in the most direct and dangerous way. Even if the clause remain in its present impossible and absurd form, even if there are to be two Legislatures and two majorities, and the Irish are to vote only on Imperial affairs, except when local affairs involve a change in the Imperial Government, the clause introduces the element of local intrigue in the most obvious way. As Mr. Gladstone himself confessed, the Irish will have a claim to vote on any question, local or Imperial, which involves a. change of Government. Let it be the purely local ques- tion of the Church Establishment, whether of England or Scotland,—if the Government of the day declare that it must resign if defeated, the Irish will all troop in to give their votes. Of course, as Ireland will have no direct interest in the matter, patriotic Irishmen will make con- ditions. They will take care to know how the Scotch or English Members regard Ireland's financial obligations, before they vote. They will vote for Disestablishment if the Disestablishers favour the Irish view of what Ireland ought to pay, and for Establishment if the Conservatives faveur that view. The principle of local intrigue will he sanctioned by the clause even as it stands. Scotchmen may be perfectly sure that if they carry it even as it stands, their most cherished Scottish interests will be at the mercy of patriotic Irish intriguers. Their Church will be struck down, or sustained, not because Irishmen care whether it is struck down, or whether it is sustained, but because. they have secured the alliance in Irish affairs of the Disestablishment or Establishment Party, as the case may be.
But every one knows that the Ninth Clause, as it now stands, can no more hold its place than Mr. Gladstone can stand on his head to plead for it. As Lord Palmerston said of India Bill No. 2, that whenever you met a political friend in the street, he was sure to be smiling to himself, and when you asked him what it was he was smiling about, he always replied, "India Bill No. 2,"—so it is in relation to the Ninth Clause as it stands. It is a better joke than any in Punch. To propose seriously that there shall be two distinct majorities,—one Conservative with the Irish Members away, and one Gladstonian with the Irish Members included,—and that whenever the Conservative majority disturbs the nerves of the Gladstonian Ministry sufficiently to make them threaten resignation, the Irish shall flock back and determine a purely British question in the Gladstonian sense only to save the Ministry, is so intrinsically absurd that only such a Parliament as Alice might have found in Wonderland could possibly accede to it. Of course, this preposterous and quite impossible arrange- ment will disappear, even in the four days which are all that are to be afforded to the discussion under the gagging resolu- tion; and we shall have instead, as Mr. Gladstone himself evidently thinks more probable than not, the retention of all the Irish Members for all purposes alike, Imperial or British, during the six years of the temporary arrangement. That is at least practicable, though frankly immoral ; while the present proposal is both impracticable and furtively' immoral. To return the Irish Members for all purposes for six years at least, though they will have no representative interest in many of the issues to be discussed, is introducing motives,—and even patriotic motives,—for political in- trigue, so powerful, that we should not shrink from saying that it would be an omen of the downfall of representative government in this Kingdom. And a very remarkable fact it would be that the very statesman whose absolutely superstitious respect for the right of local majorities to claim local control was so morbid that he broke up his party t ) obtain its recognition, should have been compelled, by the logic of that superstition, seriously to propose what is not only fatal to all local majorities, but to the principle. of representation itself,—what implies, indeed, the osten- tatious suicide of the principle of representation. The irony of political destiny can hardly go further than it will go, if it compels Mr. Gladstone to accept, for six years at least, 103, or even 80, Members of Parliament who are to interfere in all discussions and divisions, without having so much as a rotten borough behind them to give them even a plausible pretext for interfering in a large number of these discussions, and who, even where Ireland is really interested, will represent not the interest of Ireland as an organic part of the United Kingdom, but the interest of Ireland in excusing herself from the obligations and duties which she shares with the other members of the United Kingdom. Can any one imagine a more singular and sinister result of constitutional fanaticism than this,—that the eloquent orator who was so indignant that Ireland should be expected to content herself with a much more than equal proportion of political influence in the Parlia- ment of the United Kingdom, should be driven to advo- cate that Great Britain should be expected to content herself with a much less than equal proportion of political influence in that Parliament, and to accept colleagues who will often have no shadow of representative character at all P Let not the plea of temporariness be accepted as mitigating the gross immorality of this proposal, Temporary or not, it will apply to a period of revolutionary activity, in which in all probability British questions will play quite as great a part as Irish. Mr. Gladstone does not conceal, indeed he emphasises, the necessity of pushing forward British questions during the epoch of his great Irish revolution. It is altogether for the sake of pushing forward these questions that the monstrous gagging resolutions have been carried. So that the Irish are to override us for six years while a British revolution, not indeed equal in importance to the Irish revolution, but still so important that hundreds of thousands of votes have been recorded for the Irish revolu- tion only in order that the British revolution might be carried, is to be forced through. The Scotch Members, who really care for the calm and instructed consideration of their own local affairs, as well as for retaining their hold of the affairs of the -United Kingdom, have the power if they please to defeat this monstrous injustice ; and unless they do defeat it, they will suffer, and will deserve to suffer greatly, not only in Imperial but in local politics, for their supineness.
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