The mere recital of these facts, indeed, gives but a faint impression of the actual dawn of social hope across the St. George's Channel. In order to make them realise this fully, it would be necessary to take my readers over the ground covered by the Eighty Club last summer, in light railways or motor-cars, through the north, west, east and south of Ireland. Everywhere there is the same revival. New labourers'

cottages dot the landscape, and the old mud cabins are crumbling back--"dust to dust"--into nothingness. Cultivation is improving. The new peasant proprietors are putting real work into the land which they now own, and there is an advance even in dress and manners. Drinking is said to be on the decline, and the natural gaiety of the Irish people, so sadly overshadowed during the last half-century, is beginning to return.

It is like the clearing of the sky after long rain and storm. The clouds have, for the moment, rolled away towards the horizon, and the blue is appearing. Will the clouds return, or is this improvement to be sure and lasting? That will depend on the events of the next few years.

What has produced this great change in the situation since 1893? To answer that question we must look at the Statute Book. We shall then realise that defeat in the division lobbies was not the end of Mr.

Gladstone's policy in 1886 and 1893. That policy has since borne rich fruit. It has been largely carried into effect by the very men who opposed and denounced it. Not even they could make the sun stand still in the heavens.

The Tories and Liberal dissentients who defeated Mr. Gladstone gave us no promise of these concessions. The only policy of the Tory Party at that time was expressed by Lord Salisbury in the famous phrase, "Twenty years of resolute government." Although the Liberal Unionists were inclined to some concession on local government, Lord Salisbury himself held the opinion that the grant of local government to Ireland would be even more dangerous to the United Kingdom than the grant of Home Rule.[23]

If we turn back, indeed, to the early Parliamentary debates and the speeches in the country, we find that Mr. Chamberlain in 1886 concentrated his attack rather on Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill[24] than on his Home Rule scheme. In his speech on the second reading of the 1886 Bill, indeed, Mr. Chamberlain proclaimed himself a Home Ruler on a larger scale than Mr. Gladstone--a federal Home Ruler. But in the country, he brought every resource of his intellect to oppose the scheme of land purchase.

Similarly with John Bright. Lord Morley, in his "Life of Gladstone,"

describes Bright's speech on July 1st, 1886, as the "death warrant" of the first Home Rule Bill. But if we turn to that speech we find that Bright, too, based his opposition to Home Rule almost entirely on his hatred of the great land purchase scheme of that year. He called it a "most monstrous proposal." "If it were not for a Bill like this," he said, "to alter the Government of Ireland, to revolutionise it, no one would dream of this extravagant and monstrous proposition in regard to Irish land; and if the political proposition makes the economic necessary, then the economic or land purchase proposition, in my opinion, absolutely condemns the political proposition." In other words, John Bright held to the view that it was the necessity for the Irish Land Bill of 1886 which condemned the Home Rule Bill of that year.

So powerfully did that argument work on the feelings of the British public that in the Home Rule Bill of 1893, not only was the land purchase proposition dropped, but in its place a clause was actually inserted forbidding the new Irish Parliament to pa.s.s any legislation "respecting the relations of landlord and tenant for the sale, purchase or re-letting of land" for a period of three years after the pa.s.sing of the Act.[25]

So anxious was Mr. Gladstone to show to the English people that Home Rule could be given to Ireland without the necessity of expenditure on land purchase, and with comparative safety to the continuance of the landlord system in Ireland!

Such was the record on these questions up to the year 1895, when the Unionists brought the short Liberal Parliament to a close, and entered upon a period of ten years' power, sustained in two elections with a Parliamentary majority of 150 in 1895 and of 130 in 1900.

But the biggest Parliamentary majorities have limits to their powers.

Crises arise. Accidents happen. There is always a shadow of coming doom hanging over the most powerful Parliamentary Governments. With it comes an anxiety to settle matters in their own way, before they can be settled in a way which they dislike. Thus it is that we find that between 1895 and 1905, during that ten years of Unionist power, two great steps were taken towards a peaceful settlement of the Irish question.

One was the Irish Local Government Act of 1898, which extended to Ireland the system of local government already granted in 1889 to the country districts of England. The other was the great Land Purchase Act of 1903, which carried out Mr. Gladstone's policy of 1886, and set on foot a gigantic scheme of land-transference from Irish landlord to Irish tenant. That scheme is still to-day in process of completion.

It is these two Acts which have largely changed the face of Ireland.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

Take first the Act of 1898. Up to that year the county government of Ireland was carried on entirely by a system of grand jurors, consisting chiefly of magistrates, and selected almost entirely from the Protestant minority. These gentlemen a.s.sembled at stated times, and settled all the local concerns of Ireland, fixing the rates, deciding on the expenditure, and carrying out all the local Acts. They formed, with Dublin Castle, part of the great machinery of Protestant Ascendancy. Very few Catholics penetrated within that sacred circle.

These gentlemen, even now for the most part Protestants, still hold the power of justice. But the power of local government has pa.s.sed from their hands. Every county of Ireland now has its County Council.

Beneath the County Councils there are also District Councils exercising in Ireland, as in England, the powers of Boards of Guardians. Neither the Irish counties nor the corporations of Ireland's great cities have power over their police. There are no Irish Parish Councils. Otherwise Ireland now possesses powers of local government almost as complete as those of England and Scotland.

How has this system worked? In the discussions that preceded the establishment of local government in Ireland we heard many prophecies of doom. So great was the fear of trusting Ireland with any powers of self-government that the Unionists actually proposed, in 1892, a Local Government Bill, which would have established local bodies subject to special powers of punishment and coercion.[26]

It was with much fear and trembling, then, that the Protestant Party in Ireland entered upon the new period of local government. As a matter of fact, all these fears have been falsified. Instead of proving inefficient and corrupt, the Irish County Councils have gained the praises of all parties. They have received testimonials in nearly every report of the Irish Local Government Board. If, indeed, they possess any fault, it is that they are too thrifty and economical.[27]

In one respect, indeed, these County and District Councils of Ireland have conspicuously surpa.s.sed the corresponding bodies that exist in England.

One of the most important measures pa.s.sed by the British Parliament during this period of Irish revival has been the Irish Labourers' Act.

It was one of the first measures pa.s.sed by the new Liberal Parliament of 1906, and it has been since often amended and supplemented. But its main provisions still stand. In this Act the Imperial Government grants to the local authorities in Ireland loans at cheap rates for the purpose of re-housing the Irish agricultural labourers. It places the whole administration of these loans in the hands of the Irish District Councils--a very delicate and difficult task.

So efficiently have the District Councils done their work that more than half the Irish labourers have already been re-housed. It is fully expected that within a few years the whole Irish agricultural labouring population will have received under this Act good houses, accompanied always with a plot of land at a small rent.

Compare with this the administration of the Small Holdings Act by the English local authorities. That Act, pa.s.sed in 1908, placed the actual allocation of small holdings in the hands of the English County Councils. It is not necessary to dwell here upon the notorious failure of most of the high hopes with which that measure was pa.s.sed through the British Parliament. The cause of that failure is obvious. The promise of the Small Holdings Act has been practically destroyed by the refusal of the County Councils to throw either goodwill or efficiency into its administration.

LAND PURCHASE

But the second of the two great renovating measures--the Irish Land Purchase Act of 1903--has contributed even more powerfully than the first to the recovery of Ireland during the last ten years. There again we have a great instance of the supremacy of the spirit of Parliament over the prejudices of Party. The whole tendency of democratic government is so rootedly opposed to coercion that it is difficult for any party to continue on purely coercive lines for any long period. And yet, as Mr. Gladstone always pointed out with such prescience, the only alternatives in Ireland were either coercion or government according to Irish ideas.

Now, the most noted Irish idea was the desire for personal ownership of the soil by the cultivator himself. In the years 1901 and 1902, just when the Unionists were embarra.s.sed with all the complications of the South African trouble, the Tory Government were faced again with this imperious desire. They found arising in Ireland a new revolt against the power of the landlords. The Land Courts of Ireland, set up under the Act of 1881, had given to the Irish tenant two revisions of rent--the first in 1882, and the second in 1896--amounting in all to nearly 40 per cent. But these sweeping reductions had produced a new trouble. They had brought about a state of acute hostility between landlord and tenant without any real control of the land by either. The landlords, deprived of their powers of eviction and rent-raising, were in a state of sullen fury. The tenants had made the fatal discovery that their best interest lay in bad cultivation. Both parties were opposed to the existing land administration, and the Irish people were on the eve of another great effort to attain their ideals.

The Tory Government of 1902-3, then, either had to change the whole system, or they had to enter upon a new period of coercion with a view of suppressing the increased pa.s.sion of the tenants for the full possession of the land. Looking down such a vista, the Irish landlords themselves could see nothing but ruin at the end. The Irish tenants might suffer, indeed, but they would be able to drag down their landlords in the common ruin along with them. The prospect facing the Irish landlord was nothing less than the entire, gradual disappearance of all rent.

With such a black prospect ahead, the time was ripe for a remarkable new movement, started by two distinguished Irishmen--Mr. William O'Brien on the side of the tenants, and Lord Dunraven on the side of the landlords. The omens were auspicious. Lord Cadogan, one of the old guard, had retired from the Viceroyalty, and had been succeeded in 1902 by a younger and more open-minded man, Lord Dudley. A still more remarkable man, Sir Anthony MacDonnell (now Lord MacDonnell) had been appointed to the Under-Secretaryship of Dublin Castle under circ.u.mstances which have not even yet been clearly explained. Sir Anthony MacDonnell was known to be a Nationalist, although his Nationalist tendencies had been strongly modified by a prolonged and distinguished career in India. Mr. Wyndham, then Chief Secretary, made the remarkable statement that Sir Anthony MacDonnell was "invited by me rather as a colleague than as a mere Under-Secretary to register my will." There is, indeed, no doubt that if the full facts were known, it would be found that the new Under-Secretary was appointed on terms which practically implied the adoption of a new Irish policy by the Tory Government. In other words, the party which is at the present moment (1912) entering upon an uncompromising fight against Home Rule was, in 1903, contemplating a policy not far removed from that very idea.

In the mind of Sir Anthony MacDonnell himself--and probably of several members of the Government--the policy took two forms. One was to settle the problem of Irish land, and the other was to settle the problem of Irish Government.

The first of these great enterprises went through with remarkable smoothness. Both landlords and tenants were weary of the strife, and ready for peace on terms. The leaden, merciless pressure of the great Land Courts set up by Mr. Gladstone's Act of 1881 had gradually worn down the dour and obstinate wills of the Irish landlords. The very men who had denounced land purchase as the worst element in the scheme of 1886 were now enthusiastic on its behalf. The only opposition that could have come to such a scheme was from the House of Lords, and the opposition of the House of Lords, as we all know, did not exist in those blessed years. Mr. Wyndham was sanguine and enthusiastic, and both Irish tenants and Irish landlords found a common term of agreement in mutual generosity at the expense of the taxpayer. With the help of that taxpayer--commonly called "British," but including, be it remembered, the Irish taxpayer also--the landlords were able to go off with a generous bonus, and the tenants were able to obtain prospective possession of their farms, while paying for a period of years an annual instalment considerably less than their old rent.

The terms to both landlords and tenants were so favourable that the Act of 1903 was, after a short period of pause, followed in Ireland by results which transcended the expectations of Parliament. There was a rush on one side to sell, and on the other to buy. From 1904 to 1909 the applications kept streaming in, and the Land Commissioners were kept at high pressure arranging the sale of estates. The pace, indeed, was so rapid that it laid too heavy a strain on the too sanguine finance of Mr. Wyndham's Act. The double burden of the war and Irish land proved too great. The British Treasury found that they could not pour out money at the rate demanded by the working of the Act. In 1909 it was found necessary to pa.s.s an amending Act, which has given rise to fierce controversy in Ireland. That Act slightly modified the generous terms of the Act of 1903, but not before under those terms a revolution had already been effected. Practically half the land of Ireland had pa.s.sed before 1909 from the hands of the landlords into those of the tenants.

Even on the new terms the process will go on. By voluntary means if possible, but if not, by compulsion, the land of Ireland will pa.s.s back within twenty years into the hands of the people.

Here, then--in land purchase and the new machinery of local government--are the two leading facts in the great change which had come over Ireland since 1893. What do they signify?

Why, this. In 1886 and 1893 the Unionists pointed out, not without some heat and pa.s.sion, two main difficulties in the path to Home Rule. One was the incompetence of the Irish people for local government. "They are by character incapable of self-rule," was the cry; and we all remember how Mr. Gladstone humorously described this incapacity as a "double dose of original sin."

That incapacity has been disproved. The Irish have been shown to be fully as capable of self-government as the English, Scotch, and Welsh.

The other great difficulty was the unsolved land question. "We cannot desert the English garrison--the Irish landlords," was the cry. "We cannot trust the Irish people to treat them justly." But the Irish land question is now settled. The Irish landlords are either gone or going.

The Irish tenants are becoming peasant-proprietors. All that is required now is a national authority to stand as trustee and guardian of the Irish peasantry in paying their debt to the British people--or, perhaps, even if the material condition of Ireland under Home Rule should justify that course, to take over the debt. That is the new "felt want," and the only way to supply it is to create a responsible Irish self-governing Parliament.

Thus the two princ.i.p.al changes in Ireland since 1893 have not weakened, but immensely strengthened, the case for Home Rule.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] See Appendix B.

[13] Appendix B (4), 31,000 in 1911, the lowest figure since the Famine. There is a similar decline in the number of the Migratory Labourers, from 15,000 in 1907 to 10,000 in 1910 (Cd. 6019).

[14] Appendix B (2) and (3). 2,000 families and nearly 3,000 inhabited houses.

[15] The yield of Irish income tax is practically stationary at 1,000,000, as against 30,000,000 yielded by Great Britain. (Inland Revenue Report, 1910-11, page 100.) The a.s.sessment to income tax is 40,000,000 for Ireland, as against 93,000,000 for Scotland (with about the same population), and 878,000,000 for England.

[16] See Appendix F. The diminution is from 99,000 to 80,000.

[17] The deaths from consumption in Ireland declined from 10,594 in 1909 to 10,016 in 1910. (Irish Registrar-General's Report, 1911, p.

xxvi.)