The Framework of Home Rule | Page 8

Country; but, on the
contrary, a reconciliation of races within and friendship without.
Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now? Unhappily, we shall
not know. But it does seem to me that recent history and his own
temperament would force him to do so. As in his abandonment of Free
Trade, it was a strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually
transformed him from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the
relentless enemy of Home Rule in any shape. Take the Imperial
argument, shaken to its foundations by subsequent events, from the
case he stated in 1893, and what remains? Two pleas 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"