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The opening · free to read
The United Kingdom is composed of four distinct nationalities. Each of these has retained its own distinct character, its own national history, its own patriotism and self-respect. Their affairs, great and small, general or local, are administered by one Parliament in which each is fully represented. A large majority of the Irish people have, however, asked that in addition to some representation in the united Parliament they shall be granted a local Parliament for the management of their own internal affairs. The fact that this demand, which has an important imperial as well as local bearing, has not yet been complied with has constantly been used by the enemies of the Entente Powers to represent as false and hypocritical the claims of those Powers to be regarded as the champions of the rights of small nationalities; and the case of Ireland has been compared with that of Prussian Poland, as though the peoples of these two countries were suffering the same kind of oppression, the same injustice, the same denial of the right of every man to live and prosper in his own land on equal terms with his fellow-citizens in every other part of the realm.
The best answer to this charge is to tell plainly, without contention or exaggeration, what the united Parliament has done for Ireland since the beginning of the period of reform nearly fifty years ago. That is what is here attempted, so far as it can be done in a few pages. It must be fully understood that on the Home Rule question the present statement has no bearing whatever. That difficult problem lies in an altogether different sphere of politics, and must he judged by considerations which cannot be touched on here. Without, however, trenching in any degree on controversial ground, it may be pointed out that the crucial difficulty of the Home Rule question lies, and has always lain, in the fact that in Ireland a substantial and important minority amounting to about 25 per cent. of the population, and differing from the rest of the country in religion, national traditions, and economic development, has hitherto been resolutely opposed to passing from the immediate government of the imperial Parliament to that of any other body. This minority being, for the most part, grouped together in the North-east counties, the late Government attempted to solve the difficulty by offering immediate Home Rule to that section of Ireland which desires it, while leaving the remainder as it is until Parliament should otherwise decree. This proposal was rejected by the general opinion of Nationalist Ireland, which was firmly opposed to the partition of the country for any indefinite period. The question, therefore, remains for the present in suspense, until a solution can be found which will not only ensure the integrity and security of the Empire but reconcile the conflicting desires and interests of Irishmen themselves.
So much to clear the ground in regard to the Home Rule controversy. I shall now ask the reader to glance for a moment at the condition of Ireland fifty years ago. At that time almost the whole agricultural population were in the position of tenants-at-will, with no security either against increased rents or arbitrary eviction. The housing of the rural population, and especially of the agricultural labourers, was wretched in the extreme. Local taxation and administration were wholly in the hands of Grand Juries, bodies appointed by the Crown from among the country gentlemen in each district. Irish Roman Catholics were without any system of University education comparable to that which Protestants had enjoyed for three hundred years in the University of Dublin. A Church which, whatever its historic claims may have been, numbered only about 12 per cent. of the population was established by law and supported by tithes levied on the whole country. Technical education was inaccessible to the great bulk of the nation; and in no department of public education, of any grade or by whomsoever administered, was any attention paid to Irish history, the Irish language, Irish literature, or any subject which might lead young Irishmen to a better knowledge and understanding of the special problems of their country and its special claims to the love and respect of its children.
That was the Ireland of fifty years ago. It is an Ireland which at the present day lives only on the lips of anti-British orators and journalists. It is an Ireland as dead as the France of Louis XIV. Of the abuses and disabilities just recounted not one survives to-day. The measures by which they have been removed place to the credit of the United Kingdom a record of reform the details of which, for the benefit of friends or foes, may be here very briefly set down.
In 1869 the Protestant Episcopal Church was disestablished and disendowed, and is now--many Churchmen believe to its great spiritual advantage--on the same level as regards its means of support as every other denomination in Ireland. It may be mentioned that the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland was long in the enjoyment of a State subsidy for the education of its clergy, a subsidy commuted in 1869 for a capital sum of 370,000 pounds.
As comparisons have been drawn between the systems of government in Ireland and in Poland, let us consider for a moment the condition of the Polish rural population under German rule. It must be noted that the recent promises of Polish autonomy made by Germany--obviously for military and temporary reasons--refer only to those portions of Polish territory held by other States. No change is to be made in the position of Prussian Poland. Here, for many years, it has been, and still is, the avowed object of the Prussian Government either to extirpate or forcibly Teutonise this Slavonic population, and to replant the country with German colonists. The German Chancellor in 1900, Prince von Buelow, defended this anti-Polish policy in the cynical saying that "rabbits breed faster than hares," and the meaner animal, the Pole, must therefore be drastically kept down in favour of the German. Between 1886 and 1906 the Prussian Government was spending over a million sterling a year in buying out Polish landowners, great and small, and planting Germans in their stead. The measure proved futile; the "rabbits" still multiplied, for the Poles bought land from German owners faster than the Government did from them. In 1904, in order to check the development of Polish agriculture and land-settlement, the Government took the extreme step of forbidding Poles to build new farmhouses without a licence. A still more oppressive measure came in 1908, when, in clear defiance of the German Constitution, the Prussian Government actually took powers and were voted funds--from taxation paid by Poles and Germans alike--for the compulsory expropriation of Polish owners against whom nothing whatever could be alleged except their non-German nationality. These powers have been put into operation, and every Pole in Prussia now holds his patrimony on his own soil on the sufferance of a Government which regards his very existence as a nuisance, because he occupies a place which a German might otherwise fill.
During precisely the same period the British Government in Ireland has been bending the wealth and credit of the United Kingdom to objects precisely the reverse. Ireland, owing to the wars and confiscations of the seventeenth century, had come to have a land-owning aristocracy mainly of English descent with a Celtic peasantry holding their farms as yearly tenants. The object of British land-legislation has been to expropriate the landlords, so far as their tenanted land is concerned, and to establish the Irish peasant, as absolute owner of the land he tills. The Irish tenant is now subject only to rents fixed by law; he can at any time sell the interest in his farm, which he has, therefore, a direct interest in improving; he is also assisted by a great scheme of land-purchase to become owner of his land on paying the price by terminable instalments, which are usually some 20 per cent. less than the amount he formerly paid as rent. Under this scheme about two-thirds of the Irish tenantry have already become owners of their farms, while the remainder enjoy a tenure which is almost as easy and secure as ownership itself. It is not surprising, then, that a German economist who has made a special study of this subject should declare that "the Irish tenants have had conditions assured to them more favourable than any other tenantry in the world enjoy"; adding the dry comment that in Ireland the "magic of property" appears to consist in the fact that it is cheaper to acquire it than not.[*] That magic has been worked for Ireland by the British Legislature and by British credit. As in Prussia, compulsory powers (limited by certain conditions and to certain districts) stand behind the schemes of the Government; but the compulsion is exercised not against the Irishman in favour of the English settler, but against the (usually) English landlord in favour of the Irish tenant. The State is now pledged to about 130,000,000 pounds for the furtherance of this scheme, the instalments and sinking fund to the amount of about 5,000,000 pounds a year being paid with exemplary regularity by the farmers who have taken advantage of it.
[Footnote *: Professor M. Bonn, of Munich University. "Modern Ireland and her Agrarian Problem," pp. 151, 162, translated from "Die irische Agrarfrage." Archiv fuer Sozialwissenschaft; Mohr, Tuebingen.]
In the poorer and more backward regions of the West it has been felt that the above measures are not enough, and a special agency has been constituted with very wide powers to help the Western farmer, and not only the farmer, but the fisherman, the weaver, or anyone pursuing a productive occupation there, to make the most of his resources and to develop his industry in the best possible way. This Board commands a statutory endowment of 231,000 pounds a year. A system of light railways which now covers these remote districts has given new and valuable facilities for the marketing of fish and every kind of produce.
The various Boards and other agencies by which these measures are carried into execution are manned almost exclusively by Irishmen.
There is a world of difference between the present lot of the Irish agricultural labourer and his condition in 1883, when reform in this department was first taken in hand. Cottages can now be provided by the Rural District Councils and let at nominal rents. Nearly nine millions sterling have been voted for this purpose at low interest, with sinking fund, and up to the present date 47,000 cottages have been built, each with its plot of land, while several thousand more are sanctioned.
Of the results of the Labourers' Act a recent observer writes:
"The Irish agricultural labourer can now obtain a cottage with three rooms, a piggery, and garden allotment of an acre or half an acre, and for this he is charged a rent of one to two shillings a week ... These cottages by the wayside give a hopeful aspect to the country ... flowers are before the doors of the new cottages and creepers upon the walls. The labourer can keep pigs, poultry, and a goat, and grow his potatoes and vegetables in his garden allotment."[*]
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