Home rule -- Ireland; Ireland -- Politics and government
Federal Upper Chambers, so far from being hostile to State rights, are
almost invariably framed on the principle of giving disproportionately
large representation to the smaller States. In the United States and
Australia, for example, every State, however small, has an equal number
of Senators.
It will be clear now that there are two distinct ways of approaching the
question of the framework of Home Rule. One may begin with the nature
and extent of the powers reserved or delegated, and proceed from them to
the inclusion and exclusion of Irish representation at Westminster, or
one may begin with the topic of inclusion or exclusion and proceed from
it to the nature and extent of powers. While premising that we must
trust Ireland and evoke her sense of responsibility, I chose the latter
of the two courses, because I believe it to be on the whole the most
illuminating and trustworthy course. It is also the more logical course,
though I should not have adopted it for that reason alone; and I have
already given, I hope, some good reasons to show that in this matter
logic and policy coincide. Englishmen pride themselves on the lack of
logic which characterizes their slowly evolved institutions, but they
may easily carry that pride to preposterous extremes. Faced now with the
necessity of making a written Constitution which will stand the test of
daily use they would commit the last of innumerable errors in Irish
policy if, with full warning from experience elsewhere, they were to
frame a measure whose unprecedented and unworkable provisions were the
outcome of a distrust of Ireland which it was the ostensible object of
the measure itself to remove.
IV.
IRISH POWERS AND THEIR BEARING ON EXCLUSION.
I pass to what I suggest to be the right solution: Total exclusion, as
proposed by Mr. Gladstone in 1886, though he shrank from recommending
what he knew to be its financial corollary. Mr. Bright regarded
exclusion as the "best clause" of a dangerous scheme, and Mr.
Chamberlain has admitted that he attacked it, as he attacked the
proposals for Land Purchase, which he knew to be right, in order to
"kill the Bill."[79] I propose only to recapitulate the merits of
exclusion before dealing with the alleged difficulties of that form of
Home Rule, and in particular with the point on which the controversy
mainly turns--Finance.
To give Ireland Colonial Home Rule, without representation in London, is
to follow the natural channel of historical development. Ireland was
virtually a Colony, and is treated still in many respects as an inferior
type of Colony, in other respects as a partner in a vicious type of
Union. We cannot improve the Union, and it is, admittedly, a failure.
Let us, then, in broad outline, model her political system on that of a
self-governing Colony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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