Against Home Rule | Page 3

they are all leaders of Unionist
thought and opinion, and their views in the main represent the policy
which the Unionist Government, when returned to power, will have to
carry into effect.
Among the contributors to the book are an ex-Premier, four ex-Chief
Secretaries for Ireland, an ex-Lord Lieutenant, two ex-Law officers,
and a number of men whose special study of the Irish question entitles
them to have their views most carefully considered when the time
comes for restoring to Ireland those economic advantages of which she
has been deprived by political agitation and political conspiracy. At the
present moment the discussion of the Irish question is embittered by the
pressing and urgent danger to civil and religious liberties involved in
the unconditional surrender of the Government to the intrigues of a
disloyal section of the Irish people. It is the object of writers in this
book to raise the discussions on the Home Rule question above the
bitter conflict of Irish parties, and to show that not only is Unionism a
constructive policy and a measure of hope for Ireland, but that in
Unionist policy lies the only alternative to financial ruin and
exterminating civil dissensions.
We who are Unionists believe first and foremost that the Act of Union

is required--in the words made familiar to us by the Book of Common
Prayer--"for the safety, honour and welfare, of our Sovereign and his
dominions." We are not concerned with the supposed taint which
marred the passing of that Act; we are unmoved by the fact that its
terms have undergone considerable modification. We do not believe in
the plenary inspiration of any Act of Parliament. It is not possible for
the living needs of two prosperous countries to be bound indefinitely
by the "dead hand" of an ancient statute, but we maintain that
geographical and economic reasons make a legislative Union between
Great Britain and Ireland necessary for the interests of both. We see, as
Irish Ministers saw in 1800, that there can be no permanent resting
place between complete Union and total separation. We know that Irish
Nationalists have not only proclaimed separatist principles, but that
they have received separatist money, on the understanding that they
would not oppose a movement to destroy whatever restrictions and
safeguards the Imperial Parliament might impose upon an Irish
Government.
The first law of nature with nations and governments, as with
individuals, is self-preservation. It was the vital interests of national
defence that caused Pitt to undertake the difficult and thankless task of
creating the legislative union. If that union was necessary for the
salvation of England and the foundation of the British Empire, it is
assuredly no less necessary for the continued security of the one and
the maintenance and prestige of the other.
Mr. J.R. Fisher, in his historical retrospect, shows us how bitter
experience convinced successive generations of English statesmen of
the dangers that lay in an independent Ireland. One of the very earliest
conflicts between the two countries was caused by the action of the
Irish Parliament in recognising and crowning a Pretender in Dublin
Castle. Then the fact that the Reformation, which soon won the
adherence of the English Government and the majority of the English
people, never gained any great foothold in Ireland, caused the bitter
religious wars which devastated Europe to be reproduced in the
relations of the two countries. When England was fighting desperately
with the Spanish champions of the Papacy, Spanish forces twice

succeeded in effecting a landing on the Irish coast, and were welcomed
by the people. Later on, by the aid of subsidies from an Irish Parliament,
Strafford raised 10,000 men in Ireland in order to support Charles I. in
his conflict with the English people. Cromwell realised that the only
remedy for the intrigues and turbulence of the Irish Parliament lay in a
legislative union. But, unfortunately, his Union Parliament was
terminated by the Restoration. Then, again, when France became the
chief danger that England had to face, Tyrconnel, with the aid of
French troops and French subsidies, endeavoured to make Ireland a
base for the invasion of England. Under the Old Pretender again,
another effort was made to make the Irish Parliament a medium for the
destruction of English liberties.
In these long-continued and bitter struggles we see the excuse, if not
the justification, for the severe penal laws which were introduced in
order to curb the power of the Irish chieftains. We see also the
beginning of the feud between Ulster and the other provinces in Ireland,
which has continued in a modified form to the present day. Strafford
found that, in order to bolster up the despotism of the Stuarts, he had
not only to invade England, but to expel the Scottish settlers from the
Northern province. The Irish