The Framework of Home Rule | Page 5

want the
best possible scheme of Home Rule, and the best possible scheme is
not likely to be the half measure which, from no fault of the statesman
responsible for it, tactical difficulties may make inevitable. If the vital
energy now poured into sheer uncompromising opposition to the
principles of Home Rule could be transmuted into intellectual and
moral effort after the best form of Home Rule, I believe that the result
would be a drastic scheme.
Compromise enters more or less into the settlement of all burning
political questions. That is inevitable under the party system; but of all
questions under the sun, Home Rule questions are the least susceptible
of compromise so engendered. The subject, in reality, is not suitable for
settlement at Westminster. This is a matter of experience, not of
assertion. Within the present bounds of the Empire no lasting
Constitution has ever been framed for a subordinate State to the
moulding of which Parliament, in the character of a party assembly,
contributed an active share. Constitutions which promote prosperity
and loyalty have actually or virtually been framed by those who were to
live under them. If circumstances make it impossible to adopt this
course for Ireland, let us nevertheless remember that all the friction and
enmity between the Mother Country and subordinate States have arisen,
not from the absence, but from the inadequacy of self-governing
powers. Checks and restrictions, so far from benefiting Great Britain or
the Colonies, have damaged both in different degrees, the Colonies
suffering most because these checks and restrictions produce in the
country submitted to them peculiar mischiefs which exist neither under
a despotic régime nor an unnatural Legislative Union, fruitful of evil as
both those systems are. The damage is not evanescent, but is apt to bite
deep into national character and to survive the abolition of the
institutions which caused it. The Anglo-Irish Union was created and
has ever since been justified by a systematic defamation of Irish
character. If it is at length resolved to bury the slander and trust Ireland,
in the name of justice and reason let the trust be complete and the
institutions given her such as to permit full play to her best instincts
and tendencies, not such as to deflect them into wrong paths. Let us be
scrupulously careful to avoid mistakes which might lead to a fresh
campaign of defamation like that waged against Canada, as well as

Ireland, between 1830 and 1840.
The position, I take it, is that most Irish Unionists still count, rightly or
wrongly, on defeating Home Rule, not only in the first Parliamentary
battle, but by exciting public opinion during the long period of
subsequent delay which the Parliament Bill permits. Not until Home
Rule is a moral certainty, and perhaps not even then, do the extremists
intend to consider the Irish Constitution in a practical spirit. Surely this
is a perilous policy. Surely it must be so regarded by the moderate
men--and there are many--who, if Home Rule comes, intend to throw
their abilities into making it a success, and who will be indispensable to
Ireland at a moment of supreme national importance. Irretrievable
mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances of
political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will
have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and
generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the greatest
vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment in Great
Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced to shelter
behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments which, if
Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution themselves,
they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act in the
form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might bitterly
regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be necessary
to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side and all
the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would find
intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which are
not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on the
eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation of
all her ablest sons.
If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there
lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be
encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a
Tory than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the
prospect of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a
semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would
reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But