Against Home Rule | Page 3

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 Parliament in the time of Tyrconnel again began to prepare for the invasion of England by an attempt to destroy the Ulster plantation. The settlers had their estates confiscated, the Protestant clergy were driven out and English sympathisers outlawed by name, in the "hugest Bill of Attainder which the world has seen."
Admiral Lord Charles Beresford points out the danger from a naval point of view of the French attempts to use Ireland as a base for operations against England, both under Louis XIV. and under the Republican Directory. He quotes Admiral