Handbook of Home Rule | Page 6

these measures, which points entirely the other way; and the
publication in English newspapers and constant discussion on English
platforms of the painful incidents which seem, unfortunately,
inseparable from a rigid administration of the law in Ireland, together
with the prolonged debates, such incidents give rise to, in Parliament,
aggravate the difficulties of administration, and lead the Irish people to
believe that exceptional legislation will be as short-lived in the future
as it has been in the past.
It was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in 1885, and the
startling disclosure of the weakness of the anti-national party in Ireland
at the election in the autumn of that year, which finally convinced me
that the time had come when we could no longer turn to a mixed policy
of remedial and exceptional criminal legislation as the means of
winning the constituencies of that country in support of our old system
of governing Ireland. That system has failed for eighty-six years, and
obviously cannot succeed when worked with representative institutions.
As the people of Great Britain will not for a moment tolerate the
withdrawal of representative government from Ireland, we must adopt
some new plan. What I have here written deals with but a fragment of
the arguments for Home Rule, some of which are admirably set forth
by the able men who have written the articles to which this is the
preface. I earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many
excellent Irishmen who still cling to the old traditions of English rule,
and cause them to realize that the only way of relieving their country
from the intolerable uncertainty which hangs over her commercial,
social, and political interests and paralyzes all efforts for the
improvement of her people, will be to form a Constitution supported by
all classes of the community. I trust that they will join in this work
before it is too late, for they may yet exercise a powerful and salutary
influence in the settlement of this great question.

FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: There was one case--North Louth--in which two
Nationalists opposed one another, and I have left that case out of the
calculation.]

AMERICAN HOME RULE
BY E.L. GODKIN
American experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the
controversy now raging in England over the Irish question, both by way
of warning and of example. For instance, I have found in the Times as
well as in other journals--the Spectator, I think, among the
number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering Ireland a
government like that of an American State, on the ground that the
Americans are loyal to the central authority, while in Ireland there is a
strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under
Home Rule. The Queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to
run in large parts of Ireland, while in every part of the United States the
Federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of Federal authority
find ready aid and sympathy from the people. If I remember rightly, the
Duke of Argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the difference
between giving local self-government to a community in which the
tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to one in
which these tendencies are "centripetal." The inference to be drawn was,
of course, that as long as Ireland disliked the Imperial government the
concession of Home Rule would be unsafe, and would only become
safe when the Irish people showed somewhat the same sort of affection
for the English connection which the people of the State of New York
now feel for the Constitution of the United States.
Among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy
on one side or the other, no one has, so far as I have observed, pointed
out that the state of feeling in America toward the central government
with which the state of feeling in Ireland towards the British

Government is now compared, did not exist when the American
Constitution was set up; that the political tendencies in America at that
time were centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love
and admiration with which Americans now regard the Federal
government are the result of eighty years' experience of its working.
The first Confederation was as much as the people could bear in the
way of surrendering local powers when the War of Independence came
to an end. It was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security
which led to the framing of the present Constitution. But even with this
experience still fresh, the adoption of the Constitution was no easy
matter. I shall not burden this article with historical citations showing
the very great difficulty which the framers of the Constitution had