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Further Reading

Home Rule

For more than a generation the "Irish Question", the dominated British politics, often to the exclusion of what in retrospect seem to be more important questions, such as the rise of Germany. The Liberal Party was determined to grant Ireland 'Home Rule', with its own parliament within the United Kingdom. Protestant Ulstermen of the north were oppposed to being ruled from Dublin. From 1885 on Ireland steadily elected four-fifths of her 103 members as Home Rulers, and these 81 to 85 members, repeatedly holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, had been able to decide the fate of governments.

Gladstone's first bill was defeated in the House of Commons by a split in the Liberal party. His second bill passed the Commons but was rejected by the Lords. A third bill was actually placed on the statute book during Asquith's Premiership, but it had been re- passed over the opposition of the House of Lords and never came into effect owing partly to the militant hostility of Protestant Ulster and partly to the coming of the Great War. The Home Rule bill of 1920 had a smoother course.

In the period following Catholic emancipation, a powerful Irish party emerged with 'Home Rule' as its objective. Led in succession by Isaac Butt, Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond and other able political strategists, the Irish Parliamentary Party kept the 'Home Rule' question to the forefront of politics for some 40 years. The question of self-government, or 'Home Rule' had not been settled: attempts by Daniel O'Connell and Isaac Butt in the 1840s and 1870s came to little, but under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell in the 1880s, the Irish Parliamentary Party placed the Irish question at the center of British politics. In 1886, the Liberal party under W.E. Gladstone came to support a limited form of self-government for Ireland. Nationalism was and is a potent populist force in Irish politics. The prospects of Home Rule galvanised the Unionists in Ireland, who were predominantly Protestant, and were a majority in the province of Ulster. Along with their allies in England who feared that Home Rule for Ireland would lead to the break-up of the Empire, Unionists set out to prevent the granting of Home Rule.

From 1800 to 1829 there was no articulate expression in Parliament from the Irish nation, for no Roman Catholic Irishmen were in the enjoyment of the franchise. Catholic emancipation, which was forced from the British government in 1829, was followed by the agitation for "repeal" led by O'Connell. This movement collapsed in 1843, and then followed the bitter years of famine and emigration which reduced the population by almost one-half. From 1848 to 1871, the predominant features of Irish history were discontent and disaffection. Fenianism, which had its rise in the sixties, kept England in panic and nearly embroiled her in war with the United States. In 1869 the disestablishment of the Irish church was thrown as a sop to quiet the discontent; and in 1870 a Land Act, amended into ineffectiveness by the House of Lords, marked the first step in the legislation which culminated in Wyndham's Land Purchase Act of 1903.

On more constitutional lines than those followed by the Fenians, the first home-rule movement in Parliament began in 1871. At first this was largely an Ulster movement, and it was made possible by the granting of the franchise to workingmen living in the Parliamentary boroughs. The first Parliamentary leader of the movement was Isaac Butt. He was succeeded in 1880 by Charles Stuart Parnell, who had already proved his power by the introduction of obstructive tactics in the House of Commons, had won the confidence of the Fenian leaders and had identified himself with the Land League movement. The reply of the British government to the lawless tactics of the Land League was Gladstone's Land Act of 1881 - the act which may be regarded as the real beginning of the long series of remedial measures passed to still the agrarian agitation which had kept Ireland in a constant turmoil.

It was not until after the Reform Act of 1884 had enfranchised the working classes living outside the limits of the Parliamentary boroughs that the home rule question became a pressing one for the British Parliament. From 1885 on Ireland steadily elected four-fifths of her 103 members as Home Rulers, and these 81 to 85 members, repeatedly holding the balance of power in the House of Commons, had been able to decide the fate of governments. From the Reform Act of 1884 through 1914 there were eight general elections. In 1886, 1895 and 1900 the Conservatives obtained majorities over Liberals and Nationalists combined. In 1885, 1892, 1906, January, 1910, and December, 1910, the Liberals had the support of the majority elected to the House of Commons; but in one only of these elections - that of 1906 - were the Liberals returned in such numbers as to make them independent of the support of Irish Nationalists.

In 1885, at the first general election at which the workingmen of Great Britain and Ireland were able to express their opinions throughout the constituencies, there were returned to Parliament 250 Conservatives, 335 Liberals and 85 Irish Nationalists. In the Parliament of 1880-1885, during the greater part of which the Liberals had been in office, the Irish had been inclined to act with the Conservatives. The Gladstone Cabinet had been defeated in June 1885, nominally on the question of the duties on beer and spirits in the budget, but really because of the death of General Gordon at Khartoum and the conduct of affairs in the Sudan. Lord Salisbury was prime minister when the appeal was made to the new electorate in November 1885, and in his famous speech at Newport, on October 7, 1885, he had made a definite bid for the Irish vote.

The Liberal policy in Ireland had been a combination of repression and removal of grievances. Side by side with the Land Act, which was intended to secure to the tenant the value of his improvements and to fix the rents on a fair valuation of the landlord's property, the Liberals had passed a Coercion Act. This measure had been obstructed in the House of Commons by the Irish under the leadership of Parnell; and resentment against this drastic law, which is described by Lord Morley in his life of Gladstone as an act which "practically enabled the viceroy to lock up anybody he pleased and detain him as long as he pleased," was stronger than gratitude for the land legislation.

During the short-lived administration of Lord Salisbury, in 1885-86, an attempt was made to bind to the Conservative party in power the Irish Home Rulers who had acted with it in opposition. Lord Carnarvon, the new viceroy, definitely abjured coercion as a means of government and, as soon as he arrived in Ireland, entered into negotiations with Parnell. In the Newport speech, Lord Salisbury made a declaration of the policy of his party, which was taken by many to foreshadow some measure of home rule for Ireland. He stated that there were two reasons for not renewing the Coercion Act: "We could not, and it would have done no good if we could. . . . To follow the extension of the franchise by coercion would have been a gross inconsistency. To show confidence by one act and the absence of confidence by a simultaneous act would be to stultify Parliament. Your inconsistency would have provoked such intense exasperation that it would have led to ten times more evil, ten times more resistance to the law than your crimes act could possibly have availed to check."

In this Newport speech there was a forecast at least of wide powers of local government for Ireland. In treating the question of extending English institutions to Ireland, Lord Salisbury touched upon the necessity of protection for the minority. His remedy was not the division of Ireland into small independent local governing areas. On this point he said: "Local authorities are more exposed to the temptation of enabling the majority to be unjust to the minority when they obtain jurisdiction over a small area than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wider area. In a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly and mistakes of one."

Gladstone, after devoting serious thought to the subject, declared himself in favour of a generous measure of local government; but insisted on the necessity of securing a large Liberal majority independent of the Home Rulers, in order to enable him to deal with the question satisfactorily. Parnell, who was watching eagerly, seized the occasion to invite Gladstone to formulate a plan of Home Rule on his own lines. This Gladstone refused to do. Thereupon Parnell, on November 21, issued a manifesto calling on the Irish of Great Britain to vote solid for the Tories. In view of this pronouncement and of the policy of conciliation inaugurated in Ireland, there was some expectation that the Conservatives would continue to hold office by the help of the Irish Nationalists.

The result of the general election of 1885 was satisfactory to no one but Parnell. There was no majority for either party - Liberals, 335 ; Conservatives and Nationalists, 335 - but, in a letter to Balfour of December 20, 1885, Gladstone offered his support if the Conservatives should undertake to devise a plan of government for Ireland. Lord Salisbury was too prudent to risk his political career by any such adventure, and the settlement of the Irish question was turned over to the Liberals. The defeat of the Conservative government did not come, however, on the Irish question, but on an amendment to the address in reply to the speech from the throne affecting the English rural laborer. The vote on this amendment was taken on January 27, 1886, and the division showed 252 for the government and 331 for the opposition - composed of 257 Liberals and 74 Irish Nationalists. By this time the Nationalist leaders had learned from Gladstone that he was willing to commit himself and his party to the introduction of a home-rule bill.