The Framework of Home Rule | Page 8

only--first, the abnormality of Irishmen; second, Ireland's proximity to England. The first expresses the old traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy; the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same time to ruin England. Unconnected, however loosely, with the high Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893. He was a democrat, devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of popular power. Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home Rule on different grounds. It was strange enough to see the argument used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and generosity of free electorates. It was all the stranger in that Mr. Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario within the Dominion of Canada. But politics are politics. Under the inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell their indictments with every count which will bear the light. The system works well enough in every case but one--the indictment of a fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself. There, both in Ireland and everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief. Once committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone's Bills, Mr. Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every device in his power.
One other point survives in its integrity from the case made by Mr. Chamberlain in 1893, and that is the argument about distance. Clearly this is a quite distinct contention from the last; for distance from any given point does not by itself radically alter human nature. Australians are not twice as good or twice as bad as South Africans because they are twice as far from the Mother Country. "Does anybody doubt"--let me repeat his words--"that if Ireland were a thousand miles from England she would not have been long before this a self-governing Colony?" The whole tragedy of Ireland lies in that "if"; but the condition is, without doubt, still unsatisfied. Ireland is still only sixty miles away from the English shores, and the argument from proximity, for what it is worth, is still plausible. To a vast number of minds it still seems conclusive. Put the South African parallel to the average moderate Unionist, half disposed to admit the force of this analogy, he would nevertheless answer: "Ah, but Ireland is so near." Well, let us join issue on the two grounds I have indicated--the ground of Irish abnormality, and the ground of Ireland's proximity. It will be found, I think, that neither contention is tenable by itself; that a supporter of one unconsciously or consciously reinforces it by reference to the other, and that to refute one is to refute both. It will be found, too, that, apart from mechanical and unessential difficulties, the whole case against Home Rule is included and summed up in these two contentions, and that the mechanical problem itself will be greatly eased and illuminated by their refutation.
II.
Those sixty miles of salt water which we know as the Irish Channel--if only every Englishman could realize their tremendous significance in Anglo-Irish history--what an ineffectual barrier "in the long result of time" to colonization and conquest; what an impassable barrier--through the ignorance and perversity of British statesmanship--to sympathy and racial fusion!
For eight hundred years after the Christian era her distance from Europe gave Ireland immunity from external shocks, and freedom to work out her own destiny. She never, for good or ill, underwent Roman occupation or Teutonic invasion. She was secure enough to construct and maintain unimpaired a civilization of her own, warlike, prosperous, and marvellously rich, for that age, in scholarship and culture. She produced heroic warriors, peaceful merchants, and gentle scholars and divines; poets, musicians, craftsmen, architects, theologians. She had a passion for diffusing