CHAPTER III. The Home Rule Bill of 1912

THE HOME RULE BILL OF 1912

The year 1912, in which the straight fight on Home Rule was to begin, opened stormily. Mr. Churchill was announced to speak under the auspices of the Ulster Liberal Association in the Ulster Hall at Belfast. It was the hall in which his father, Lord Randolph Churchill, had used the famous phrase "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right." Belfast was determined that the son should not unsay what the father had said in this consecrated building; it would be, as an Ulster member put it in the House of Commons, "a profanation." On this first round, Ulster won; Mr. Churchill spoke at Belfast, but not in the Ulster Hall. There were angry demonstrations against him; his person had to be strongly protected and he went away from the meeting by back streets. It was noticeable that no such precautions were needed for Redmond, who attended the meeting and walked quite unmolested through the crowd. The British electorate, as a whole, was somewhat scandalized by the exhibition of so violent a temper; but the education of the British electorate was only beginning.

Congestion of business from the previous session deferred the introduction of the Home Rule Bill till April. Great demonstrations for and against it were held in advance. In Dublin on March 31st was such a gathering as scarcely any man remembered. O'Connell Street is rather a boulevard than a thoroughfare; it is as wide as Whitehall and its length is about the same. On that day, from the Parnell monument at the north end to the O'Connell monument at the south, you could have walked on the shoulders of the people. Four separate platforms were erected, and Redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief. He dwelt on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven corporations were represented officially by their civic officers; professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore. But one section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent. To Ulster he had this to say:

"We have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. We have one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the arrival of the day of reconciliation."

A feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, assumes strange significance in retrospect. At one platform Patrick Pearse, then headmaster of St. Enda's school, spoke in Irish. What he said may be thus roughly rendered:

"There are as many men here as would destroy the British Empire if they were united and did their utmost. We have no wish to destroy the British, we only want our freedom. We differ among ourselves on small points, but we agree that we want freedom, in some shape or other. There are two sections of us--one that would be content to remain under the British Government in our own land, another that never paid, and never will pay, homage to the King of England. I am of the latter, and everyone knows it. But I should think myself a traitor to my country if I did not answer the summons to this gathering, for it is clear to me that the Bill which we support to-day will be for the good of Ireland and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. I am not accepting the Bill in advance. We may have to refuse it. We are here only to say that the voice of Ireland must be listened to henceforward. Let us unite and win a good Act from the British; I think it can be done. But if we are tricked this time, there is a party in Ireland, and I am one of them, that will advise the Gael to have no counsel or dealings with the Gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. Let the Gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war in Ireland."

The platform where Pearse spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the General Post Office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of Redmond's lifetime. At that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the speech, also in Irish, of Professor John MacNeill from another platform, which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with Pearse.

But Redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in Ireland. Speaking on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill on April 11th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the Irish people wanted separation and that the Irish leaders were separatists in disguise:

"I will be perfectly frank on this matter. There always has been, and there is to-day, a certain section of Irishmen who would like to see separation from this country. They are a small, a very small section. They were once a very large section. They are a very small section, but the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present system and give into the hands of Irishmen the management of purely Irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will disappear; and if it survives at all, I would like to know how under those circumstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief than at the present moment."

Sincerer words were never spoken, nor, I think, a better justified forecast. Where Redmond and all of us were wrong was that we underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what Pearse ultimately accomplished, even when assisted by the widespread disillusionment and sense of betrayal which was the atmosphere of 1916.

But no one in Ireland in 1912 thought of a separatist rebellion. What was on all tongues was the possibility of physical resistance to Home Rule. The debate on the first reading went by with little reference to this contingency, but Mr. Bonar Law closed his speech on that note. He had attended the great counter-demonstration in Belfast which followed ours in Dublin and had seen in it "the expression of the soul of a people."

"These people look upon their being subject to an executive Government taken out of the Parliament in Dublin with as much horror, I believe with more horror, than the people of Poland ever regarded their being put under subjection by Russia; they say they will not submit except by force to such government. These people in Ulster are under no illusion. They know they cannot fight the British Army. But these men are ready, in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down their lives."

Bloodshed, if bloodshed there was to be, was anticipated in Ulster only, and the resistance indicated at this point was purely passive. But even after the Bill had been introduced, Tories entertained the hope that a Nationalist Convention might save them trouble and reject what the Government offered. Even Mr. O'Brien, however, had given the Bill a lukewarm approval, and at this moment Redmond's prestige stood very high. When the Convention assembled, he utilized that advantage to the full. These assemblies presented a problem which might intimidate the most capable chairman. Theoretically deliberative, they had at least a representative character; all branches of the United Irish League, all branches of the Hibernians and Foresters, all county and district councils sent up their chosen men, to whom were added such clergy as chose to attend. The result was a mass of over two thousand persons packed into a single room; they deliberated in the physical conditions of a crowd; hearing was difficult, disorder only too easily brought about. I have seen one of these Conventions sharply divided in opinion, and counting of votes would have been impossible. On this day, however, there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the proposition that it was their "duty" as Nationalists to accept what he described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered. He further indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting, proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party. This was promptly carried by acclamation. All decisions were unanimous that day.

But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention, Redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most willingly, a welcome to Mr. Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member of Parliament had just voted for the Bill. The greeting which he received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last years had been.

In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the struggle from 1886 to 1893:

"Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. One is Mr. Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. The other is the Irish response to Mr. Gladstone. It was not the assent of mere tacticians who had gained an advocate and a point. It was genuine, warm and living feeling, a response of gratitude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as his own."

If Redmond's task from 1912 onwards was not lightened by the existence of any such genuine, warm and living feeling for any of Mr. Asquith's Ministry, perhaps Ireland is not to blame. There was no intense grip of any fact in the Government's attitude, and on one cardinal point they were unstable as water. Sir Edward Carson, in opposing the introduction of the Bill, had used the words: "What argument is there that you can raise for giving Home Rule to Ireland that you do not equally raise for giving Home Rule to that Protestant minority in the north-east province?" Redmond, following him, made one of his few false moves in debate. "Is that the proposal? Is that the demand?" he asked. Sir Edward Carson shot the question at him: "Will you agree to it?" Seldom does the House see a practised speaker so much embarrassed; Redmond in confusion passed to another topic. He was soon to be confronted with that same line of reasoning, pushed not dialectically by an opponent, but as a step in parliamentary negotiation from the Treasury Bench. Mr. Churchill, who introduced the Second Reading, made it apparent that the demonstration in Belfast had not been wasted on him.

"Whatever Ulster's rights may be," he said, "they cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of Ireland. Half a province cannot impose a permanent veto on the nation. The utmost they can claim is for themselves. I ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves? Do the counties of Down and Antrim and Londonderry, for instance, ask to be excepted from the scope of this Bill? Do they ask for a parliament of their own, or do they wish to remain here? We ought to know."

This was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain. Mr. Gladstone, with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in Ireland, would have known that concession on such point was a very different matter from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the Parliament. It admitted, in fact, the contention that Ireland was not a nation but a geographical expression.

As soon as the Bill went into Committee, the result was seen. The first serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Derry, and it was moved from the Liberal benches. Three Liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which lasted to the third day--and on the division the majority, which had been 100 for the Second Reading, fell to 69. Mr. Churchill did not vote--nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did Mr. Lloyd George.

Thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself. By the mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use of troops, Ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge into the composite Home Rule alliance, and into the Cabinet itself. All this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line of attack.

Nor was the full extent of weakness revealed. In such a case, much depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and Mr. Agar-Robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the Government ranks. Twentieth-century Liberalism wears a somewhat drab and serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would have been in his place among the votaries of Charles James Fox. The climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated Protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the alteration of the Coronation oath to a formula less offensive to Catholics. Nobody doubted that his Cornish constituents would endorse whatever he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but no one took him very seriously as a politician. This particular view of his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate, Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against Ulster's claims as Agar-Robartes did for them.--Sunt lacrimae rerum. I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair, side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches. The two brilliant lads--for they were little more--have gone now, swept into the abyss of war's wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains, virulent as ever.

Agar-Robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the Bill henceforward; the other Liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the Government lobby. What had really mattered was Mr. Churchill's speech on the Second Reading. Captain Pirrie, one of Redmond's few closely attached friends outside the Irish party, bound, I think, far more in affection to the Irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily of the Government's evasive reticence. This brought up the Prime Minister, whose speech was brief and direct:

"This amendment proceeds on an assumption which I believe is radically false, namely, that you can split Ireland into parts. You can no more split Ireland into parts than you can split England or Scotland into parts."

When Sir Edward Carson had spoken, the Ulster leader's speech enabled Redmond to point out that Ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a means by which Ulster might be reconciled to Home Rule, but were ready to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment. General opinion on both sides of the House agreed that the amendment made the Bill impossible; and the majority held that therefore Ulster must give way. Ulster, on the other hand, held that therefore there must be no Home Rule Bill. But there was a Liberal element evidently not convinced that Home Rule might not be possible with Ulster excluded. Mr. Birrell admitted that the plan of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on the merits, as unworkable. Still he professed himself open to conviction. The argument which Mr. Bonar Law decided to use was a threat. Government are saying to the people of Ulster, he said, "Convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else." Captain Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister anticipated that Ulster's objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. "If the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty's dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge."

This temper soon had ugly expression. On June 29th an excursion party of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Roman Catholic counterpart to the Orange Order) met with another excursion party of Protestants, mainly Sunday-school children, at a place called Castledawson. Taunts were exchanged and one of the Hibernians tried to snatch a flag from the other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children were hurt and many frightened. This discreditable incident was magnified with all the rancour of partisanship--as in the state of feeling must have been expected. But the reprisals were startling. All Catholics were driven out of the Belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two thousand men were still deprived of work on July 12th, when the Unionist party held a great meeting at Blenheim. Mr. Bonar Law, facing for the first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of Parliament, he had counselled action outside constitutional limits. Now, he emphasized it that he took the same attitude as leader of the Unionist party.

"We shall use any means--whatever means seem to us to be most likely to be effective--any means to deprive them" (the Government) "of the power they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have deceived. The Home Rule Bill in spite of us may go through the House of Commons. There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. I can imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people."

Sir Edward Carson said on behalf of Ulster: "It will be our duty shortly to take such steps--and, indeed, they are already being taken--as will perfect our arrangements for making Home Rule absolutely impossible. We will shortly challenge the Government to interfere with us if they dare. We will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and inconvenience. They may tell us, if they like, that this is treason."

Well might Mr. Bonar Law say in returning thanks that this day "would be a turning-point in their political history."

Moderate opinion was by no means glad to have reached this turning-point, and The Times rebuked Mr. Law for his violence. But, tactically, the Unionists were right: they had a Government indisposed to action and they made the most of their opportunity. Mr. Churchill again took up the conduct of the controversy, and in the recess proceeded to outline a policy which he described as federal devolution. The Prime Minister had said you could no more split Ireland into parts than England or Scotland. But Mr. Churchill argued that, in the interest of efficiency, England must be divided into provincial units with separate assemblies; that Lancashire, for instance, had on many matters a very different outlook from that of Yorkshire. He did not draw the conclusion; but it was not difficult to infer that Mr. Churchill was at least as ready to give separate rights to Ulster as to any group of English counties, and was equally ready to pitch overboard the Prime Minister's argument for refusing partition in Ireland.

In the meantime Ulster's preparations continued. It was indicated that they would bear a religious character, and the Protestant Churches were deeply involved. The proposal of a Covenant was made public in August, though the actual signing of it was deferred to "Ulster Day," September 28th. Sir Edward Carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the pageant. These things excited a good deal of derision, and the language of the Covenant was held to be only "hypothetical treason." The main words were:

"We stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland."

The Covenant in that committed the signatories to no breach of the law; it was only a pledge to refuse to recognize the authority of a Parliament not yet in being. All Ulster's proceedings might so far be dismissed, as the Attorney-General, Mr. Rufus Isaacs, dismissed them, as being "a demonstration admirably stage-managed, and led by one of great histrionic gifts." The threats of the use of force, said the Attorney-General, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. Mr. Asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his conclusions. Speaking at Ladybank on October 5th, he denounced "the reckless rodomontade of Blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete grammar of anarchy." But he was careful to point out that there was no demand for separate treatment for Ulster, and that Irish Unionists were simply refusing to consent to Home Rule under any conditions. He refrained from saying how a demand for separate treatment of Ulster would be dealt with if it were made.

When Parliament resumed its sittings, in a temper much heated by all the challenge and controversy of the recess, Mr. Lloyd George pushed this line of argument a shade further. He argued that Sir Edward Carson himself persisted in treating Ireland as a unit.

"Until Ulster departs from that position there is no case. Ulster has a right to claim a hearing for separate treatment; she has no right to say, 'Because we do not want Home Rule ourselves the majority of Irishmen are not to have Home Rule.'"

Yet upon the balance of events, Unionists were probably disappointed. A very strong British feeling against Sir Edward Carson and his Belfast following had been generated by the expulsion of Catholics from the shipyards and in general by the advocacy of civil war. In October 1912 several notable men who had previously counted as Unionists--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir J. West-Ridgway--all declared for Home Rule. Exasperation against the incidence of the new Insurance Act lost the Government votes at every by-election; but the Irish cause on the whole gained ground, and the chief cause of that advance was the respect universally felt for Redmond's personality and leadership. On November 22nd he attended a huge meeting of the National Liberal Federation at Nottingham along with the Prime Minister and received a wonderful welcome. The step was novel. Never since Parnell's work began had the leader of the Irish people stood on the same platform in Great Britain with the leader of any English party. It was, however, the return of a compliment, for Mr. Asquith had come to Dublin in the summer and there spoken along with the Irish leader. Moreover, a recent incident had shown how necessary it was to maintain the closest co-operation; a snap division on November 11th had inflicted defeat on the Government and occasioned loss of perhaps a fortnight's parliamentary time.

But in the very act of thus strengthening his hold on the British electorate, Redmond gave ground to those in Ireland who desired to represent him as a mere tool of the Liberal party, a pawn in Mr. Asquith's game. Foreseeing this evil did not help to combat it, and on the whole it was Redmond's inclination to take a sanguine view of his country's good sense and generosity.

The Committee stage of discussion lasted beyond the end of the year. On the finance arrangements Redmond had to face fierce opposition from Mr. O'Brien's party, which was endorsed by the Irish Council of County Councils. Here difficulties were inevitable, and attack was easy either for the Unionists, who pressed the argument that Ireland was to be started on its career of self-government with a subsidy of some two millions per annum from Great Britain, or for the O'Brienites, who urged that the country was already overtaxed in proportion to its resources, that it needed large expenditure for development, and that the possible budget indicated by the Bill left no serious possibility for reducing taxes or for undertaking even necessary expenditure. Redmond, on the other hand, was bound to conciliate the vested interests of civil servants, officials in all degrees, and the immense police force. Retrenchment on the vast area of unproductive expenditure which Castle government had created could only be hoped for at a very distant date. He could not therefore promise substantial economy; nor could he argue for a further increase of subsidy without playing into the Tories' hands. On all this detail of the measure, the attack in debate was bound to be very powerful.

So far as Great Britain was concerned, the reply of Home Rulers was tolerably effective. In 1886 it had been feasible to propose Home Rule with an Imperial contribution of two and a half millions. By 1893 the possible margin had dropped heavily, and Mr. Gladstone had foretold that within fifteen years Ireland would absorb more money for purely Irish services than Irish taxation produced. This prophecy had been fulfilled to the letter, and everyone saw that to continue the Union meant increasing this charge automatically. It was better to cut the loss and at least say that it should not exceed a fixed figure.

But in Ireland men dwelt always on the Report of the Financial Relations Commission, which had represented the balance as heavily against England and the account for overtaxation of the poorer country as reaching three hundred millions. No man quoted this document oftener than Redmond, and none was a firmer believer in its justification. But he realized, as his countrymen did not, that such a claim could never hope for cash settlement, that its value was as an argument for the concession of freedom upon generous terms. How could he urge that the terms proposed were ungenerous, when Great Britain offered to pay the cost of all Irish services--amounting to a million and a half more than Irish revenue--and to provide over and above this a yearly grant of half a million, dropping gradually, it is true, but still remaining at a subsidy of two hundred thousand a year so long as the finance arrangements of the Bill lasted?

Nevertheless, these arrangements were bad ones, and this was where the Bill was most vulnerable on its merits; for self-government without the control of taxation and expenditure is at best an unhopeful experiment.

But in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that was Ulster. Men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the House. On New Year's Day 1913, at the beginning of the Report stage, Sir Edward Carson moved the exclusion of the province of Ulster. His speech was in a new tone of studied conciliation. But, as the Prime Minister immediately made clear, there was no offer that if this concession were made opposition would cease. It was merely recommended as the sole alternative to civil war. Redmond, in following, let fall an obiter dictum on the position of the Irish controversy:

"No one who observes the current of popular opinion in this country can doubt for one instant that if this opposition from the north-east corner of Ulster did not exist, Home Rule would go through to-morrow as an agreed Bill."

For this reason, he said, he would go almost any length within certain well-defined limits to meet that section of his fellow-countrymen. His conditions were, first, that the proposal must be a genuine one, not put forward as a piece of tactics to wreck the Bill, but frankly as part of a general settlement of the Home Rule question; secondly, that it must be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the fundamental principle of national self-government. Ulster's present proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of Ireland five counties with Nationalist majorities. But finally, on a broader ground, it destroyed the national right of Ireland.

"Ireland for us is one entity. It is one land. Tyrone and Tyrconnell are as much a part of Ireland as Munster or Connaught. Some of the most glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been associated with Ulster--aye, and with the Protestants of Ulster--and I declare here to-day, as a Catholic Irishman, notwithstanding all the bitterness of the past, that I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick. Our ideal in this movement is a self-governing Ireland in the future, when all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise, national statesmanship, and national happiness. Men may deride that ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they cannot call it an ignoble one. It is an ideal that we, at any rate, will cling to, and because we cling to it, and because it is there, embedded in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a sharp, eternal dividing line between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition and disintegration of our nation. To that we as Irish Nationalists can never submit."

Later in the debate, Mr. Bonar Law admitted quite frankly the argument against treating all Ulster as Unionist, and he proceeded to suggest that any county in Ulster might be given power to decide whether or not it should come into the new Parliament. It was plain, however, and Mr. Churchill made it plainer, that the Unionist leader did not speak for Ulster; Ulster's intention was still to use its own opposition to Home Rule as a bar to self-government for the whole of Ireland.

Equally was it plain that the plebiscite by counties would not be unacceptable to Mr. Churchill.

The proposal for the exclusion of the entire province was defeated by a majority of 97 and the Third Reading was carried by 110. A few days later the city of Derry returned a Home Ruler, and the Ulster representation became seventeen for the Bill and sixteen against. This dramatic change produced a considerable effect on British opinion. Redmond, speaking at a luncheon given to the winner, Mr. Hogg, indicated the lines on which he was disposed to bargain. He would be willing to give Ulster more than its proportional share of representation in the Irish Parliament.

The debate in the House of Lords was marked by certain speeches which showed that public opinion had moved considerably. Lord Dunraven declared for the Second Reading, though pressing all the line of objection to the Bill which had been taken by Mr. O'Brien and his party. He heaped scorn also as an Irishman upon "this absurd theory of two nations which is only invented to make discord where accord would naturally be." Lord MacDonnell, whose administrative experience could no more be questioned than his genius for administration, held that though amendment was needed the framework of the Bill was good, and that urgent necessity existed for the change to self-government. He alluded to the opinion expressed by Mr. Balfour in 1905, that the proper way of reforming Dublin Castle was by increasing the power of the Chief Secretary and his Under-Secretary, and thereby getting a stronger grip on the various departments of the "complicated system" prevailing. "I thought so too," said Lord MacDonnell, who in 1905 as Under-Secretary had tried his hand at this reform. "It was one of the illusions that I took with me to Ireland twenty years ago--but I am now a wiser man.... My observation of the Boards had convinced me before I left Ireland that no scheme of administrative reform which depends on bureaucratic organization for its success, or which has not behind it a popular backing, has the least chance of success in an attempt to establish in Ireland a government that is satisfactory to the Imperial Parliament or acceptable to the Irish people."--This was a repudiation of the Irish Council Bill of 1907 by its main author.

Lord Grey, a vivid and attractive personality, declared strongly for "such a measure of Home Rule as will give the Irish people power to manage their own domestic affairs." It was a conviction that had been forced upon him by his experience of Greater Britain. "Practically every American, every Canadian, every Australian is a Home Ruler." But the settlement must proceed upon federal lines; his ideal for Ireland was the provincial status of Ontario or Quebec, linked federally to a central parliament at Westminster.

The most significant speech, however, came from the Archbishop of York. Disclaiming all party allegiance, Dr. Lang claimed to express "the opinions of a very large number of fair-minded citizens." He admitted that there was an Irish problem, which could not be solved by "a policy however generous of promoting the economic welfare of Ireland." "Some measure of Home Rule is necessary not only to meet the needs of Ireland but the needs of the Imperial Parliament." This Bill, however, in his opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. It would be a block rather than a relief to the congestion of business. But these objections were "abstract and academic" in face of the real governing fact.

"The figure of Ulster, grim, determined, menacing, dominates the scene.... We may not like it. Frankly, I do not like it. It carries marks of religious and racial bitterness and suspicion. It uses language about dis-obedience to the law which must provoke disquiet and dislike in the minds of all who care for the good government of the country. I am not competent, because I have not shared in the experience of the history of the Ulster people, to decide whether or not their fears are groundless. All these things seem to me to be beside the point. If Ulster means to do what it says, then the results are certainly such as no citizen can contemplate without grave concern.... I admit, everyone must admit, that there are circumstances in which a Government is entitled and bound to run this kind of risk. At the present time I think we all feel that there is a call upon Governments to stiffen rather than to slacken their determination in the presence of threats of dis-obedience or disorder. I will go further and admit that there is one condition which would justify in my mind His Majesty's Government in running the risk of the forcible coercion of Ulster. That condition is that they should have received from the people of this country an authority, clear and explicit, to undertake that risk. It is perfectly true that the Prime Minister gave notice that if his party were returned to power they would be free to raise again the question of Home Rule, but there is a great difference between the abstract question of Home Rule and a concrete Home Rule Bill."

That speech undoubtedly represented the temper prevailing in the class of balancing electors which is so largo in England. Some of us who read it at the time recognized how far the long struggle for autonomy had prevailed, but also how strong were the forces which no argument could reach. Men like Dr. Lang might be offended, even shocked by the action of those who claimed to be England's garrison in Ireland; but they would be very slow to use force against such a section, although quite ready to justify coercion of the Irish majority. Yet what impressed Redmond was the advance made, rather than the revelation of what resistance remained. Ho had been more than thirty years an advocate of Ireland's cause; and now by the spokesman of the impartial educated mind of England the justice of that cause was admitted. The argument that a general election was necessary, or would be efficacious in solving the problem, was one with which he felt well able to contend. In that speech the Archbishop of York admitted his impression that in by-elections there had been "much more of Food Taxes and the Insurance Act than of Home Rule."

On the other hand, for Ulster such a speech had the plainest possible moral: Ulster's game was to become more grim, more determined, more menacing. The Home Rule controversy had now resolved itself into a question whether Ulster really meant business. Sir Edward Carson set himself to make that plain beyond yea or nay.

In a speech delivered in Belfast, at the opening of a new drill hall, he asked and answered the question, "Why are we drilling?" He and his colleagues did not recognize the Parliament Act, he said; a law passed under it would be only an act of usurpation, a breach of right. "We seek nothing but the elementary right implanted in every man: the right, if you are attacked, to defend yourself."

Ulster was going to stand by its Covenant.

"When we talk of force, we use it, if we are driven to use it, to beat back those who will dare to barter away those elementary rights of citizenship which we have inherited.... Go on, be ready, you are our great army. Under what circumstances you have to come into action, you must leave with us. There are matters which give us grave consideration which we cannot and ought not to talk about in public. You must trust us that we will select the most opportune methods of, if necessary, taking on ourselves the whole government of the community in which we live. I know a great deal of that will involve statutory illegality, but it will also involve much righteousness."

Some of the questions which needed grave consideration were suggested by happenings that followed hard on this speech. Much ridicule had been poured on the drillings with dummy muskets. Ulster evidently decided to push the matter a step further. A consignment of one thousand rifles with bayonets, in cases marked "electrical fittings," was seized at Belfast on June 3, 1913. Other incidents of the same nature followed. It was argued, by those who sought to represent the whole campaign as an elaborate piece of bluff, that the weapons were useless and that they were deliberately sent to be seized. A feature which scarcely bore out this view was that one consignment was addressed to the Lord-Lieutenant of an Ulster county who was also an officer in the Army. A justice of the peace, or an officer, to whom a consignment of arms had been sent for a Nationalist organization would have been ordered to clear himself in the fullest way of complicity, and even of sympathy, or he would have forfeited his commission. The noble-man involved, however, made no explanation, and was probably never officially asked to do so.

It was commonly believed in the House of Commons that at some point, if not repeatedly, Government consulted the Irish leader or his principal advisers as to whether measures of repression should be undertaken against Ulster. No such consultation took place. But the opinion prevailing among the leading Nationalists was no doubt known or inferred. Mr. Dillon, speaking on June 16, 1914, when the danger-point had been clearly reached, justified the previous abstinence from coercion.

"I have held the view from the beginning that it would not have been wise policy for a Government engaged in the great work of the political emancipation of a nation to embark on a career of coercion. I knew, and knew well, all the difficulties and all the reproaches that the Government would have to face if they abstained from coercion. It is a difficult and almost unprecedented course for a Government to take, and it is, as the Chief Secretary said, a courageous one. But with all its difficulties and dangers it is the right course. We who have been through the mill know what the effect of coercion is. We know that you do not put down Irishmen by coercion. You simply embitter them and stiffen their backs."

It is therefore unquestionable that the decision to do nothing had Redmond's approval. Whatever may be thought of that policy, one factor was assuredly underestimated--the effect produced on the public mind by the spectacle of highly placed personages defying the law and defying it with impunity. It was possible to argue that a conviction for hypothetical treason would be difficult to secure and that failure in a prosecution would only encourage lawless conduct. But Privy Councillors who made preparations for prospective rebellion and remained Privy Councillors were a new phenomenon. The public thought, and it was apparent that the public would think, that Government was afraid to quarrel with what is called Society. Society shared that belief and began to extend its influence in a new direction. No Government can permit itself to be defied without general relaxation of discipline, and the effects extended themselves to the Army. At a meeting on July 12th in Ulster a telegram was read out from "Covenanters" in an Ulster regiment, urging "No surrender until ammunition is spent and the last drop of blood." In his speech on that occasion Sir Edward Carson declared that every day brought him at least half a dozen letters from British officers asking to be enrolled among the future defenders of Ulster. One officer, he said, having signed the Covenant, was ordered to send in his papers and resign his commission. The officer refused to do so, and after a short time was simply told to resume his duty.

"We have assurance from the Prime Minister," said Sir Edward Carson, "that the forces of the Crown are not to be used against Ulster. Government know that they could not rely on the Army to shoot down the people of Ulster."

Later events in Ireland furnished a grim commentary as to what the Army would be willing, and would not be willing, to do in the way of shooting down in Ireland; and such words as these of Sir Edward Carson were destined to be among the chief difficulties which Redmond had to encounter when he sought to lead Ireland into the war.

At the meeting of that day, delegates were present from a British League to assist Ulster in her resistance. Behind this new quasi-military organization stood now the whole of one great party. Sir Edward Carson transmitted a message from Mr. Bonar Law in these words:

"Whatever steps we may feel compelled to take, whether they be constitutional, or in the long run whether they be unconstitutional, we will have the whole of the Unionist party under his leadership behind us."

Later in the autumn, on the first anniversary of Ulster Day, there was formally announced the formation of an Ulster Provisional Government, with a Military Committee attached to it. A guarantee fund to indemnify all who might be involved in damaging consequences was set on foot, and a million sterling was indicated as the necessary amount to be obtained.

In the meantime signs of distress came from the Liberal camp. Mr. Churchill, in speeches to his constituents, renewed the suggestions for partition. More notable was a letter from Lord Loreburn, who had till recently been Lord Chancellor, and who was known as a steady and outspoken Home Ruler. He appealed in The Times of September 11, 1913, for a conference between parties on the Irish difficulty. Irish Nationalist opinion grew profoundly uneasy, and Redmond at Limerick on October 12th set out his position with weighty emphasis. He referred to the fact that during the summer he himself, assisted by Mr. Devlin, had followed Sir Edward Carson and other Ulster speakers from place to place through Great Britain, and on the same ground had stated the case for Home Rule. He claimed, and with justice, a triumphant success for this counter-campaign.

"The argumentative opposition to Home Rule is dead, and all the violent language, all the extravagant action, all the bombastic threats, are but indications that the battle is over."

Still, he was too old a politician, he said, not to build a bridge of gold to convenience his opponents' retreat, provided that the fruits of victory were not flung away. Mr. Churchill had told the Ulstermen that there was no demand they could make which would not be matched, and more than matched, by their countrymen and the Liberal party. On this it was necessary to be explicit.

"Irish Nationalists can never be assenting parties to the mutilation of the Irish nation; Ireland is a unit. It is true that within the bosom of a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government and of administration, but a unit Ireland is and Ireland must remain.... The two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy."

These were carefully chosen words, and they indicated a possible acceptance of the proposal that Ulster should have control of its own administration in regard to local affairs, but that Irish legislation should be left to a common parliament.

This plan Sir Edward Grey described as his "personal contribution" to a discussion of possibilities which had been inaugurated by a notable speech from the Prime Minister. At Ladybank, on October 25th, Mr. Asquith invited "interchange of views and suggestions, free, frank, and without prejudice." Nothing, however, could be accepted which did not conform to three governing considerations. First, there must be established "a subordinate Irish legislature with an executive responsible to it"; secondly, "nothing must be done to erect a permanent and insuperable bar to Irish unity"; and thirdly, though the process of relieving congestion in the Imperial Parliament could not be fully accomplished by the present Bill, Ireland must not be made to wait till a complete scheme of decentralization could be carried out.

The second of these conditions was plainly the most significant. It was taken to mean that "county option"--the right for each county to decide whether it would come under a Home Rule Government--would not create "a permanent and insuperable" obstacle, since each county could be given the opportunity to vote itself in at any time. Redmond's next important speech in England showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger. He denounced "the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail" which was in progress. The proposed exclusion of Ulster was not a proposition that could be considered. It would bring about, he thought, the ruin of Ulster's prosperity. "For us it would mean the nullification of our hopes and aspirations for the future." It would stereotype an old evil in the region where it still existed. What Ulster really feared, he said, was the loss, not of freedom or prosperity, but of Protestant ascendancy.

This was the truth; Protestant ascendancy, which in his boyhood had existed throughout all Ireland, was in consequence of the Irish party's work dead in three provinces. It remained and must remain in Ulster, where Protestants were a majority, but it would be qualified if that region came under the control of a parliament elected by all Ireland. That was and is the true reason of Ulster's resistance to national self-government. What he would concede and what he would reject, Redmond indicated in general words: "There is no demand, however extravagant and unreasonable it may appear to us, that we are not ready carefully to consider, so long as it is consistent with the principle for which generations of our race have battled, the principle of a settlement based on the national self-government of Ireland. I shut no door to a settlement by consent, but ... we will not be intimidated or bullied into a betrayal' of our trust."

It was noted at that time that he had said nothing to rule out Sir Edward Grey's proposal, which would have left the local majority predominant in Ulster's own affairs; and on December 4th Sir Edward Grey spoke again, showing a firmness that was the more impressive because of his habitual moderation of tone. One thing, he said, was worse than carrying Home Rule by force, and that would be the abandonment of Home Rule. Two suggestions had been made--a proposal for the temporary exclusion of Ulster and a plan for giving to Ulster administrative autonomy. Neither had been received by Ulster "in a spirit which seemed likely to lead to a settlement.... Was it a settlement by consent they wanted, or was their aim simply the destruction of the Bill?"

This emphasized what Redmond had said a few days earlier at Birmingham, when he declared that the fight against Home Rule was not an honest one, that its real purpose was to defeat the Parliament Act and restore to the Tory party its special control over the legislative machine.

The facts were plain on the surface. The Tories clamoured for a fresh general election, urging that the electors never realized that the Liberal programme involved civil war. But to concede this claim indirectly defeated the Parliament Act, which would then have broken down at the first attempt to apply it. What added to the insincerity of the argument was Ulster's repeated refusal to be influenced by the result of any election. Under no circumstances, speaker after speaker from Ulster declared, would they submit to Home Rule. The prospect of civil war remained, with only one limitation. Mr. Bonar Law undertook that if a general election took place and the Liberals again came back, the British Unionist party would not support Ulster in physical resistance. They would, however, continue to oppose a Home Rule Bill by all constitutional means.

Nevertheless, the English disposition to compromise was already operating. Mr. Asquith was the last of mankind to make a quixotic stand for principle, and the most disposed to pride himself on a practical recognition of realities. His Government was in rough water. During the summer Mr. Lloyd George's transaction in Marconi shares had been magnified by partisan rancour into a crime. Much more serious was the split with Labour, which led to the loss of seat after seat at by-elections, when the allied forces which stood behind the Parliament Act attacked each other and let the Tories in. The Women's Franchise agitation was also coming to its stormiest point.

Redmond's part was one of extraordinary difficulty. The cause for which he stood was one affecting the interests of only a small minority of the total electorate concerned in the struggle which now spread over both islands. The Irish problem belonged in reality to the Victorian era; those in the British electorate whom it could stir to enthusiasm were stirred by a memory, not by a new gospel. Normally, but for the chance of Parnell's overthrow, it would have been solved in Gladstone's last years. For most Liberals, for all Labour men, the fact that it had passed beyond the sphere of argument meant a lack of driving force. It was a part of accepted Liberal orthodoxy; minds were centred rather on those social controversies in which Mr. Lloyd George was the dominant figure, and upon which opinion had not yet crystallized.

Further, the cry of Protestant liberties in danger, the cause of Protestants who conducted their arming to the accompaniment of hymns and prayer, made inevitably a searching appeal to the feelings of an island kingdom where the prejudice against Roman Catholics is more instinctive than anywhere else in the world. Looking back on it all, I marvel not at the difficulties we encountered, but at the success with which we surmounted them; and the great element in that success was Redmond's personality. His dignity, his noble eloquence, his sincerity, and the large, tolerant nature of the man, won upon the public imagination. His tact was unfailing. In all those years, under the most envenomed scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our disadvantage. This is merely a negative statement. It is truer to say that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of great issues. Nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse; he so carried the national claim of Ireland that men saw in it at once the test and the justification of democracy.

That is why the Irish cause, instead of being a millstone round the neck of the parliamentary alliance, was in truth a living cohesive force. But in order to keep it so it must be pleaded, not as a question for Ireland only but for the democracy of Great Britain and, in a still larger sense, for the Commonwealth of the British Empire.

Liberal statesmen in their desire to simplify their own task underestimated altogether the difficulty which their professed short-cuts to the goal--or rather, their attempted circuits round obstacles--created inevitably for the Irish leader. They did not realize that his genuine feeling--based on knowledge--for the British democracy at home, and still more for its offshoots overseas, was unshared by his countrymen, still aloof, still suspicious, and daily impressed by the spectacle of those who most paraded allegiance to British Imperialism professing a readiness to tear up the Constitution rather than allow freedom to Ireland. Liberal statesmen did not understand that Redmond could only justify to Ireland the part which he was taking if he won, and that he and not they must be the judge of what Ireland would consider a defeat. In all probability, also, they overrated his power and that of the party which he led. They did not guess at the potency of new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and which in the end, breaking loose from Redmond's control, undid his work. A new phase in Irish history had begun, of which Sir Edward Carson was the chief responsible author.