The Making of the Irish Nation: and the first-fruits of federation

Front matter

AND THE FIRST-FRUITS OF FEDERATION. " Major rerum nascitur ordo." BY J. A. PARTRIDGE Author of *' democracy: its factors and conditions," "from feudal to federal," "the policy of England in relation to india and the east," etc., etc. gonbun T FISHER UNWIN 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 18S6 ®o ilte TWO NATIONS £^NQLApiD AND ICELAND (the one the elder, the other the more powerful), CONSTITUTING NOW IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, IN CANADA, AUSTRALIA, AND THE COLONIES, ONE EMPIRE; AND TO THE ETERNAL MEMORIES OF MOLYNEUX, SWIFT, FLOOD, CURRAN, GRATTAN, BURKE, FOX, SHERIDAN, SHEIL, O'CONNELL, AND MANY OTHERS, THE MAKERS AND MARTYRS OF IRELAND, THIS VOLUME IS CONSECRATED.

Preface

"Sometimes, it is true, a rare individual has appeared among us, raising a degraded country from the condition of a province to the rank and consequence of a people worthy to be the ally of a mighty empire, forming the league that bound her to Great Britain, on the firm and honourable basis of equal liberty and a common fate, standing and falling with the British Empire." — Curran. "One word upon the legislative independence of Ireland — that which is now called a 'Repeal of the Union.' It is said to be a severance of the empire, a separation of the two countries. Illustrious lady, these statements are made by men who know them to be unsounded ; an Irish legislative inde pendence would, on the contrary, be the strongest and most durable connection between your Majesty's Irish and your British dominions.

It would, by con ciliating your Irish subjects, and attending to their wants and wishes, render the separation of Ireland from the lawful dominion of your Crown utterly impossible." — O'Connell's Memoir Addressed to the Queen. " I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of our not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-con nected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations. If we make ourselves too little for the sphere of our duty ; if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our minds to the compass of their object, be well assured that everything about us will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimen sions of our minds. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two capacities — one, as the local legislature of this island, providing, &c. ; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, in what I call her imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior legislatures, and guides and controls them all, without annihilating any." — Burke.

PREFACE.

. "Without examining details, the whole of liberal Europe and America is loud in admiration of the initiative taken by the illustrious statesman." — Emile de Laveleye. " She follows her physical destination, and obeys the dispensations of provi dence when she protests like that sea, against the two situations, both equally unnatural — separation and union. She feels her Constitution to be her great stake in the empire, and the empire the great security of her Constitution. If British ministers take away the Constitution, they withdraw at once a great pillar of liberty and empire." — Grattan. "Should England not change her conduct, Ireland may still for a long period belong to her ; but not always ; and the loss of that country is the death-day, not only of her greatness, but her very existence." — Niebuhr.

" High politics are like the pyramids, only two sorts of animals reach the top — reptiles and eagles." — D'Alembert. We are in a transition state. Yesterday, we were an oligarchic republic (tempered by queen, chaos, and revolu tion) ; to-day, we are a democratic republic (a pyramid, resting for the most part on its base) ; to-morrow, we shall be members of an imperial democratic confederated empire, the most stupendous manifestation of order, economy, and power, yet possible on this planet ; and whilst all things are getting forged and fitted to their places, men come up to see and wonder at this great sight, a mighty people, a royal nation, an imperial confederacy, depending not on its creatures, but on itself, nor intending ever again, for all or any of them, to run again the dread inane cycle of blood, ruin, and reaction.

It is all coming, because come it must. The fact is, we are at the fag end of a slave fight. We have let our overseers, Pitt, Peel, and Co., carry on, since 1782, the Preface. X "hell harrowing" of Ireland, because in 1782 she happened to have, not a captain, but only orators and a parliament ; and because we can't understand till it is licked into us, that any one but ourselves — and Polands and Italys a long way off — have rights. We want Home Rule in England. We can't make England, or Ireland, or the empire, with out making Ireland, and if we don't begin soon it may be too late. Manhood rules here now, and rules for manhood and empire, not for property, slave-drivers, or things; and besides all that, the Puritans are waking up, and they are the real blood royal of England. On the whole, our situation to-day is not unlike that of America, when making up its mind to put down the slave trade and to unite the empire — sketched so well by Wendell Phillips : " I divide you into four sections.

The first is the ordinary mass, rushing from mere enthusiasm to battle. Behind that class stands another, whose only idea in this controversy is Sovereignty and the flag. Next to it stands the third element, the people — the broad surface of the people, who have no time for technicalities, who never studied law, who never had time to read further into the Constitution than the first two lines, ' Establish justice and secure liberty.' They have waited long enough ; they have eaten dirt enough; they have apologized for bankrupt statesmen enough; they have quieted their consciences enough ; and now they have got their hand on the neck of a rebellious aristocracy, and in the name of the people mean to strangle it. " That I believe is the body of the people itself. Side by side with them stands a fourth class — small, but active — the abolition ists, who thank God that He has let them see His salvation before they die."

With us, the slaves and the slave-drivers are not in the same country. With us, the "rebellious aristocracy," and " the bankrupt statesmen," have hardly yet gone under ; but "the people have waited long enough, eaten dirt enough, apologized enough, and quieted their consciences enough " Preface. XI for them. All the people are going to do now, however, is to wrench these bankrupt statesmen from the throats of the Irish nation. It is our duty now to make to Ireland certain con cessions, but duty soon will be something else in the world-logic of nation and empire. A little more tom foolery about Ireland, and events themselves will pro nounce the philosophers played out, and demand "room for the men of destiny." The ultimate facts between us and Ireland are that Ireland must soon hold ten millions of souls, that the ten millions of other Irish elsewhere will soon become twenty millions — subscribing, aspiring, and, if they must, avenging — with cosmopolitan sympathies, with American drill and arms, and Irishmen in England enough to command sixty or seventy boroughs, to say nothing of foreign war.

Besides all this, England is in a more factitious state than Ireland, which has to fill up and grow in greater ratio than England can. Not one-fourteenth of Ireland is uncultivatable, and she is nearer the west, and with mightier harbours. From Connaught to the Kentish coast is none too wide a base for the world-weighted glories of the empire of Cromwell and Shakespeare, of Wyclif and Milton, of Raleigh, Wesley, Chatham, Cobden, and Burke. I recur here to what I wrote " On Democracy" in 1S64, and in " From Feudal to Federal " in 1S72 : " A false conservatism dreads each advance as approaching the final anarchy, but if the progressive universal power in politics be a delusion, then, not development, but restraint is the true gos pel, and there is a hitch somewhere, not only in democracy, but in creation.

Every government tends to some preponderating power or to anarchy, and the organization of democracy is of necessity the problem of every advancing age and people. Thus a true nation itself becomes a unit, and is alone fit to enter with other nations into those grander combinations for which the world prepares. Organizations are really a hierarchy, and must rise from Preface. XII the local unit of the commune and parish, to county, province, nation, and empire. In all governments there is the virtual preponderating power that is the power which would prevail if things were forced to an issue, and the actual Constitution is or is not in danger, as it is or is not in harmony with the real power." In this view of the federal question, Professor Dicey and others have lately talked in a rather helpless way about our imperial Constitution as binding Australia or Canada ; as though a Constitution, which, in case of strain could not constitute, could settle the principle of any such problem.

The question is hardly a political one, even for academicians, " How to arrange so that the preponderating power shall not preponderate " ! The intenser nationality question being in principle settled, the broader and supreme remaining question is the constitutional one — What is to be the link between nation and empire ? In other words, the supreme question is the federal one ; and the difficulty is that the Irish question has precipitated the federal, almost before the masses have had time to realize that it is the federal. The one thing certain is that we may take advantage of the situation to make Ireland the first-fruits of federation. Ireland, Canada, Australia, and, let us hope, a South African confederation, have to be brought into working constitutional relations with each other through and with Great Britain.

The present chaos between the Lords and the people, between the empires and nations that are to be federated with one another and Great Britain, and the confusion in weak men's minds between local self government and national self-government — all this has to be altered. The Lords must be made a real Second Chamber, if there is to be one, or if empire is to be represented in it ; and, in any event, some mixed ratio of population, wealth, and contribution to the general defence, has Preface. XIII to be fixed on as the basis of imperial representation ; whilst local self-government in Scotland and Wales, the counties, and London, must ease the central machine. Of all this change, vast in detail, simple though momen tous in principle, the settlement of the Irish federal question ought to be the first-fruits and defence.

In America and Canada there were no nations to come together and agree — there were States and provinces, and vast unpeopled wilds. In Canada, Australia, Ireland, we have nations already made, and it is childish to suppose they can be treated as other than what they are. The fact is, circumstances such as those we have to consider have never been dealt with, or even existed, before — the distances, the vast territories, the coming enormous population. There are, however, odds in favour of an imperial, and almost a cosmopolitan, unity that never existed before — English traditions and the spirit of English citizenship, unity of race to a great extent, unity of language, unity or similarity of institution, a common history, and the fact that the public thought, life, and opinion of England is to so great an extent the thought, life, and opinion of the civilized world.

Representatives in London, Ireland must of course have, if only to prepare for federation. There should be 32, because that would constitute at once about the quota due from Ireland when Canada, Australia, &c, are repre sented in an Imperial Federal Parliament, and because 32 would give one representative for each county. The 32 might be elected either by the Dublin Parliament or by the counties. But we must cut our federal coat according to the confederal cloth, and not pretend that because States may coalesce better than nations, therefore we ought to treat nations as States. The principles of all these questions were discussed, Preface. XIV sifted, and acted on by the great men who made the American nation, in a way and with a clearness, sincerity, and depth that make them the best authorities in the world on federal and kindred subjects, whilst Pitt shows beside them as a satyr to Hyperion.

Said Hamilton, in The Federalist : " However gross a heresy it may be that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact, the possibility shows the necessity of laying the foundation of our national government deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The fabric of American authority ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people." Said Patrick Henry, at the Virginian Convention, 1788 : " Have they said, ' We, the States ' ? Have they made a pro posal of compact between States? If they had, this would be a confederation; it is otherwise, most clearly, a consolidated government." Said Chancellor Kent : " The plan was submitted to a convention of delegates, chosen by the people at large in each State for assent and ratification. Such a measure was laying the foundation of the fabric of our national polity where alone they ought to be laid, on the broad consent of the people."

Said Chief Justice Storey: "A fundamental law, a supreme rule, which no State was at liberty to disregard, to suspend, or to annul." Henry Clay said : " I owe a paramount allegiance to the whole union, a subordinate one to my own State; " and Madison repeatedly and emphatically declared that "the resolutions were intended to claim, not for an indi vidual State, but for the United States, the right of remedying its abuses in constitutional ways." When States make an empire, that is an orthodox, old- Preface. XV fashioned federation ; when the people make it, there is a consolidated government. But no precedent will exactly fit the Anglo-Irish problem. Lord Brougham, on the United States Government, put this clearly as to States : " The proper federal union is where two or more States, having their separate governments for all domestic purposes, are united by a central government, which regulates their mutual relations as members of a political community, but does not interfere with the functions of the several governments and their authority over the individuals which are their subjects, unless in so far as those functions and that authority may affect the federal relation.

There must be certain things which cannot be altered without universal consent." And Madison, April 8, 1787, put the converse axiom : " I hold it a fundamental point that the individual indepen dence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with the idea of an aggregate sovereignty. Let the national government have a negative. Without such a defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be unavailing." For " national " in Madison, read " imperial " for our selves ; and that emphasizes the fact that it will never do to consider a priori what makes strong or weak governments, and then say we will have such and such an arrangement, without seeing that we have the correspond ing materials. If we do, we shall get upset. For in Ireland we have to do with a nation already made, whereas in America, " the States," as Madison asserted, " never possessed the essential rights of sovereignty, having the power of making by-laws, effectual only, if not contradic tory, to the general confederation."

Of course we have to avoid the establishment of that " constituted anarchy " of which Hegel complained in Germany, " a totality, with private rights to contradict the whole." Preface. XVI All this is clear ; and as Chancellor Kent explained in his Commentaries, "the incurable defects of all former federal governments were that they were sovereignties over sovereignties ; " that is to say, translated for our own situation — That one nation, the English, should dominate another, the Irish, were an " incurable defect," no doubt. But then, I repeat, it is not, cannot be, that the English nation will attempt anything of the sort. It is the imperial delegation that will, as De Tocqueville explained of America, dominate the sections : "The Constitution rests upon a novel theory, which may be considered a great invention of political science.

In all confede rations formed before 1789, the allied States reserved to them selves the right of ordaining and enforcing the laws of the union. The American States agreed that the Federal Government should not only dictate the laws, but execute its own enactments. This alteration produced the most momentous consequences." All the American State constitutions recognize three things — certain inalienable rights of the people ; the right to change according to pre-established rules by the vote of a certain majority ; and the duty to obey until that change is effected. If we deny the first, we strike against the rock of ultimate power and appeal. We shall have to settle the mode of change, and to acknowledge the duty to obey. The mode and conditions of change were regulated for America by Article 13 of the Confederation, and by Article 5 of the United States Constitution : " Nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States ; and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State." ■ " The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution 1 Article 13 of Confederation.

Preface. XVII or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing amendments, &c" J Madison stated the general principle that organization is a hierarchy, and that all laws contrary to the spirit of the whole must be made and treated only as by-laws : " There is a gradation of power in all societies, from the lowest corporation to the highest sovereign. The States have the power of making by-laws effectual only if not contradictory to the general confederation." So that the whole question is, Do we want to make a whole or not, and what whole ? Are we to confederate, or to remain defenceless and disorganized in the face of other coming colossal combinations ? As I said, the federal question is the supreme one, and it cannot be shelved or shirked.

Montesquieu long ago explained how, in every combi nation, there is " a spirit of the whole " which must be conformed to. Are we then to subside, or to seek " the goal of this irresistible urging " ? Let Washington wind up this constitutional question: " To the efficacy and permanency of your union a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts, can be an adequate substitute ; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances, in all time, have experienced. " The basis of your political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government ; but the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all.

The very idea of the power and right of the people to establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government." 2 ' Article 5 United States Constitution, - Washington's Farewell. Preface. Now Mr. Gladstone has not appealed to " States " that are to make a nation, but to nations that are to make an empire, and the future federation will be strong, because living nations make it ; whilst divisions will be avoided or settled by representatives of the great federal communities, informed and inspired by the almost universal spirit of British citizenship. American federalists made the future nation by fair, free, and philosophic arrangements, which breathed an exalted and invincible citizenship into the hearts of the millions who were to come to her from every tyranny and every clime.

We must take Ireland as she is — about a third the size of Great Britain, with the most intense nationality, a large territory, a sea and ocean frontier — too near to be separate, too far from us to be mechanically united. If we do not want to be wiser than nature and God, we shall get along well enough. Federation may or may not make a weak Government, it all depends. Par tisans and sciolists are always the victims of words. Gladstone makes a statutory parliament — granted; but who makes Gladstone make it ? Who and what inspires him ? The Irish nation, and the spirit of the future, to which he so exquisitely refers. We have tried to destroy that nation, physically, materially, commercially, politically, and spiritually for centuries, and we have found it indestructible. The nation is there, twenty million acres are there, there are her mountains, rivers, harbours, soil, and sea.

There is the disposition to be grateful, there is the policy, inherited from Grattan and from Burke, to unite ; here is the opportunity also, and God forgive those who palter with the issues ! It is not " we, the States," who meet together and theorize, and who might form a flimsy superstructure — or weak Government — it is " we," the two nations and the Empire. It is a policy of progress and hope, instinct with all the forces and passions God can put into a nation, and based upon ample geographical Preface. XIX political, and material guarantees of real union. " We, the people " of England, make the Irish Parliament, and will make such a parliament as befits the great and glorious nationality that God and the Irish have already made. If we sow thus, we shall reap centralization thorough enough as to foreign policy, and decentralization enough also.

The Irish Establishment gone, "the Castle" disendowed, nationality appeased, why should not the whole sacred force and passion of the men of Ireland, England, and the Empire have free course and be glorified ? It may be natural for Orange ascendency to dislike Catholic equality, especially with those whom Orangemen have always treated as inferior in race, nationality, and religion ; but the double principles of nationality and equality cannot fail, as they did even in the slave States of America, to win their way. Nationality and equality are the intensest political passions, and once they are given free sway, Protestantism is certainly not a likely principle to help Ulster in repeating the part of the " mean whites " of the South in their slave crisis. Neither Orangemen who are not Irishmen, nor Irish men who are not Ulstermen, need fear English partizan ship or unfairness, for this simple reason — Irish affairs, when not settled in Ireland, will come to be dominated not by England, but by the Empire.

It is the federal power that will interfere when there must be interference; it is the federal power that will mould also imperial federal politics. The sovereignty in imperial matters will pass away from England and Ireland both, to become vested in the delegates of empire. Ireland, of course, must settle her own "by-laws." There is, I hope, in these pages, everything really necessary to a fair understanding of the essential Irish question, past and present, and of its dawning national and federal Preface. XX future ; there is also, I trust, nothing superfluous or over laboured to prevent its becoming a handbook for the people. Five years ago, seeing the crisis coming, and having always advocated recognition of the principle of Irish nationality, I made a fresh study of the Irish speeches of Grattan, Burke, and Fox.

Of course, with these great men, the making of the nation and empire were one cause, process, and question. We find, however, dismemberment, disruption, and separation charged upon them and ourselves. I then read the definite compact and treaty of peace between the two nations conducted by Grattan and Fox, assented to by the four Houses, the Premier and Viceroy, and to which George III. personally pledged himself; but this we are now told had no validity. Next came the en lightened, fair-dealing legislation of Grattan's Parliament, as good as Castlereagh's corruption and Pitt's brutality would let it be, and the evidence of the prosperity which follows freedom. I then traced the stimulated divisions between Catholic and Protestant ; the disintegration of the volunteer force ; and finally, to carry the Union, the exchange of Irish troops for English, and the making public meetings felony.

But we are told that Grattan's Parliament was a failure, the Union a success, and that the large exports, since 1S00, of food the Irish wanted prove the prosperity of Ireland, and the success of the Union ! Next there came the frightful consequences of Pitt's handiwork — his massacres, tortures, evictions, famines ; I reflected on the yearning and striving, ever since Molyneux and Swift, for nationality, their misery for seven hundred years ; but the answer came, " It is not every nation that is fit for self-government," and " the Irish have no political genius or fixed resolve." Was there, then, any possible mistake ? How is it that Ireland has not asserted herself? An English Premier Preface. XXI has given the only answer : " The only remedy was revo lution, and the Irish could not make one."

The toad under the harrow had a better chance than Ireland under Whig or Tory. Grattan's Parliament succeeded too much. Catholics were not represented that the Irish Church Establishment might be maintained. The garrison church, province, and junto helped to maintain each other, and Ireland became an English barracks. O'Connell said, in 1843, all that was necessary to prove that Ireland was a nation, and that she cannot, ought not, and dare not fail to assert her nationality, and I sum marize his speech in " The Argument." As to the sectional and superfine gentlemen who learn and remember nothing, it is not necessary to answer them. It is past their pro vince to settle anything. They are superseded. They never were anything, and never represented anything, and will soon be nothing. Two years ago Mr. Gladstone appealed to a new political world to redress the balances of the old, and two months ago he appealed bodily for a mandate to the English nation.

The moment politics came into touch with the aggregate manhood, they came into touch with reality, with the people, with the two nations, with the empire, and also with the federal instinct and prin ciple. The work of Molyneux, Swift, and Grattan was taken up where they left it, and the English and Irish nations shook hands across the gulf of centuries. Nation always sympathizes with nation, when their common factor manhood can really rule. Politics based on pro perty and things are used for property and things, and that is what we have been doing in Ireland — farming out law, land, religion, and nation on behalf of pro perty, and pretences, and against the national man hood and life. Such politics are radically and eternally illegitimate, for property ruling manhood is the servant ruling his master.

The hour has come and the man, whose imperial Radicalism has already turned the old Preface. XXII political world upside down — setting the new one on its base instead of on its apex, and who will soon turn the old political lumber-room of "the Castle" — and other places — inside out. His appeal now is to the disciplined reason of the educated few, and to the undebauched instincts of the whole English people — to those by whom the great principles of nationality and empire are always believed in and always understood. Three persistent fallacies confound and perplex the issues of the Anglo-Irish question. The first is that, in the case of Ireland, prosperity followed slavery, and a vast increase of imports and exports, the union. The second is that the province of Ulster, having a majority of Protestants, may become the victim of Roman Catholic tyranny, and has a right to demand separate legislation and autonomy, and to prevent the integration of the nation.

The third is that to qualify, to beset with conditions, or to grudgingly admit the nationality of Ireland, is to make her a better or safer helpmate, or a sounder member of our coming confederation ; and we have accordingly rather mixed analogies from the federations of the world, mis fitted and misapplied to the very special case of England and Ireland. The first fallacy is a very old and a very foolish one. As O'Connell argued, is it likely that the sort of relations forced upon Ireland, and the sort of statesmanship applied to her by Pitt and Peel, should promote prosperity ? The figures are admitted — were admitted as soon as they could well be got together — by " Mr. Wm. Irving, Inspector- General of Imports and Exports, dating from his office at the Custom-house, January 15, 1831." The tables all appear in the appendices to Sir Henry Parnell's book on " Financial Reform," and I refer to them in the sequel.