Home Rule | Page 8

events of the next few years.
* * * * *
What has produced this great change in the situation since 1893? To
answer that question we must look at the Statute Book. We shall then
realise that defeat in the division lobbies was not the end of Mr.
Gladstone's policy in 1886 and 1893. That policy has since borne rich
fruit. It has been largely carried into effect by the very men who
opposed and denounced it. Not even they could make the sun stand still
in the heavens.
The Tories and Liberal dissentients who defeated Mr. Gladstone gave
us no promise of these concessions. The only policy of the Tory Party
at that time was expressed by Lord Salisbury in the famous phrase,
"Twenty years of resolute government." Although the Liberal Unionists

were inclined to some concession on local government, Lord Salisbury
himself held the opinion that the grant of local government to Ireland
would be even more dangerous to the United Kingdom than the grant
of Home Rule.[23]
If we turn back, indeed, to the early Parliamentary debates and the
speeches in the country, we find that Mr. Chamberlain in 1886
concentrated his attack rather on Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill[24] than on
his Home Rule scheme. In his speech on the second reading of the 1886
Bill, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain proclaimed himself a Home Ruler on a
larger scale than Mr. Gladstone--a federal Home Ruler. But in the
country, he brought every resource of his intellect to oppose the scheme
of land purchase.
Similarly with John Bright. Lord Morley, in his "Life of Gladstone,"
describes Bright's speech on July 1st, 1886, as the "death warrant" of
the first Home Rule Bill. But if we turn to that speech we find that
Bright, too, based his opposition to Home Rule almost entirely on his
hatred of the great land purchase scheme of that year. He called it a
"most monstrous proposal." "If it were not for a Bill like this," he said,
"to alter the Government of Ireland, to revolutionise it, no one would
dream of this extravagant and monstrous proposition in regard to Irish
land; and if the political proposition makes the economic necessary,
then the economic or land purchase proposition, in my opinion,
absolutely condemns the political proposition." In other words, John
Bright held to the view that it was the necessity for the Irish Land Bill
of 1886 which condemned the Home Rule Bill of that year.
So powerfully did that argument work on the feelings of the British
public that in the Home Rule Bill of 1893, not only was the land
purchase proposition dropped, but in its place a clause was actually
inserted forbidding the new Irish Parliament to pass any legislation
"respecting the relations of landlord and tenant for the sale, purchase or
re-letting of land" for a period of three years after the passing of the
Act.[25]
So anxious was Mr. Gladstone to show to the English people that
Home Rule could be given to Ireland without the necessity of

expenditure on land purchase, and with comparative safety to the
continuance of the landlord system in Ireland!
Such was the record on these questions up to the year 1895, when the
Unionists brought the short Liberal Parliament to a close, and entered
upon a period of ten years' power, sustained in two elections with a
Parliamentary majority of 150 in 1895 and of 130 in 1900.
But the biggest Parliamentary majorities have limits to their powers.
Crises arise. Accidents happen. There is always a shadow of coming
doom hanging over the most powerful Parliamentary Governments.
With it comes an anxiety to settle matters in their own way, before they
can be settled in a way which they dislike. Thus it is that we find that
between 1895 and 1905, during that ten years of Unionist power, two
great steps were taken towards a peaceful settlement of the Irish
question.
One was the Irish Local Government Act of 1898, which extended to
Ireland the system of local government already granted in 1889 to the
country districts of England. The other was the great Land Purchase
Act of 1903, which carried out Mr. Gladstone's policy of 1886, and set
on foot a gigantic scheme of land-transference from Irish landlord to
Irish tenant. That scheme is still to-day in process of completion.
It is these two Acts which have largely changed the face of Ireland.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Take first the Act of 1898. Up to that year the county government of
Ireland was carried on entirely by a system of grand jurors, consisting
chiefly of magistrates, and selected almost entirely from the Protestant
minority. These gentlemen assembled at stated times, and settled all the
local concerns of Ireland, fixing the rates, deciding on the expenditure,
and