Very nearly a generation of time has elapsed since, in 1886, Mr. Gladstone expounded in the British House of Commons his first Bill for restoring to Ireland a Home Rule Parliament. Nearly twenty years have passed since that same great man, indomitably defying age and infirmities in the pursuit of his great ideal, passed the second Home Rule Bill (1893) through the British House of Commons. That Bill stands to-day unshaken in regard to all its vital clauses. Some of us still hold the faith that that Bill would, if it had become law in 1893, have saved Ireland from many years of wastage, and would have built up, to face our enemies in the gate, a stronger and stouter fabric of Empire.

The Bill of 1893 only survived the perilous tempests of the House of Commons to fall a victim to the House of Lords.

Nearly twenty years have elapsed since that day, and now the successors of Mr. Gladstone, the Progressives of the United Kingdom, Liberals, Labour Members and Nationalists, approach the same task with the Bill of 1912. Some of them are veterans of the former strife. They can turn, like the present writer, to the thumbed diaries of that great combat, and can recall the great scenes of that prolonged Parliamentary agony with a sense of treading again some well-worn road. Others are new to the issue, and can only hear, like “horns of Elf-land faintly blowing,” some faint echo from the dawn of consciousness.

But young or old, we must again set forth on our travels, and this time

“It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles.”

It will be the memory of the “Great Achilles” that will sustain us. For this task comes to Liberals as a sacred trust from Mr. Gladstone. It is from him that they have learnt that race-hatred is poison, and that the only true union between nations is in a phrase that has outlived the silly laughter of the shallow the “Union of Hearts." It is Mr. Gladstone’s work that they design to accomplish. It is the memory of his passionate and sustained devotion through the last twenty years of that glorious life that has thrown a halo round this cause, and still gilds it with a “heavenly alchemy.”

But, before we “smite the sounding furrows,” our first duty is to survey once more the seas over which we shall have to voyage. We have to consider again both the old and the new “case for Home Rule” not merely the case of 1886 or 1893, but the still stronger case of 1912.

For the world never stands still, and in every generation every great human problem presents different aspects, and shows new lights and shadows. Every great human question is like a great mountain which on a second or third visit reveals new and unsuspected depths and heights, new valleys and new peaks, slopes which new avalanches have furrowed, and glaciers which have receded or advanced.

Not that the real, great, main outline ever changes. As with the mountains, so with the great human problems; there are always certain great features which remain permanent.

THE SEA

There are, for instance, in the Irish case the sixty-five miles of sea which, since the earliest dawn of human memory, have divided Ireland from Great Britain. A fact absurdly simple and obvious, but the greatest feature of all in this mighty problem of human government!

“The sea forbids Union, and the Channel forbids Separation.” There is no change in that great physical condition. Those sixty-five miles of sea have neither increased nor diminished since 1893. That sea is still too broad for “Union” in the Parliamentary sense of that word and too narrow for Separation.

To anyone standing on the deck of one of those swift steamships which now cross to Ireland from so many points on the British coast, there must, if he has any imagination, come some vision of the vast impediment which this sea has placed in the way of direct control by England over Ireland’s domestic affairs. Looking back down the vista of history, he must see a succession of fleets delayed by contrary winds, of sea-sick kings and storm-battered convoys, of conquest thwarted by the caprice of ocean, of peace messengers and high administrators brought to anchor in the midst of their proud schemes.

The same causes still operate. In this respect, indeed, Ireland appears to be simply one instance of a general law. It may almost be laid down as an axiom that no nation can govern another across the sea. How often it has been tried, and how often it has failed! France has tried it with England, and England has tried it with France. Great Britain tried it with North America, and Spain tried it with South. In this matter even the great quickening of modern communications, even the miracles of steam and electricity, seem to have made little difference. For even at the present moment, if we look around, we shall see how great a part the sea has played as the deciding factor in forms of government. It is the sea which has made us give self-government to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. It is the sea which keeps Newfoundland apart from the Canadian Federation, and New Zealand apart from Australia. Even within the scope of these islands the same law prevails. It is the sea which makes us give self-government to the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Almost the only exception is Ireland. In Ireland we have defied this great law; and in Ireland that defiance is a failure.

And yet not defied it completely; for the very facts of Nature forbade. While we have taken away the Irish Legislature, we have been obliged to leave the Irish their separate laws, their separate Administration and Estimates, and their separate Executive in Dublin. That Executive has been for a whole century practically uncontrolled by any effective Parliamentary check. The result is that it has grown, like some plant in the dark, into such quaint and eccentric shapes and forms as to defy the control of any Minister or any public opinion. Perhaps the worst condemnation of the Act of Union has been that while we destroyed the Irish Parliament we have been obliged to leave Dublin Castle.

THE RACE

Then there is the permanent, abiding difference of Race. It is a truism of history that the Englishman who settles in Ireland becomes more Irish than the Irish. The records of the past are filled with great examples. The Norman adventurers who spread into Ireland after the Conquest have become in modern times the chiefs of great Irish communities, until names like Joyce and Burke have come to be regarded as typical Hibernian surnames. It is a commonplace of modern history that the counties settled by Cromwellian soldiers have become most typically Irish. Tipperary, Waterford, and Wexford there were great Cromwellian settlements in those counties. And yet they have taken the lead in the fiercest insurrections of modern Irish democracy.

It is only in the North of Ireland, within the confines of the province of Ulster, and there only in the extreme north-east corner, within the counties of Londonderry, Antrim, and Down, that the settlers have formed a distinct and definite racial breakwater against purely Irish influences. The plantation of Ulster in the reign of James I. took into Ireland some of the most dogged members of the Scotch race, men filled with the new fire of the Reformation, men stalwart for their race and creed. They went as conquerors and as confiscators, and for centuries they worked with arms in their hands. They slew and were slain, and were divided from the native Irish by an overflowing river of blood. That river is not yet bridged.

It has been said that there is no human hatred so great as that felt towards men whom one has wronged. The planters of Ulster inflicted upon Ireland many grievous wrongs and endured some fierce revenges. The result is that even to-day there is a section of them that still stands apart from the other colonisers of Ireland a race still distinct and apart. Is it impossible that even there the binding and unifying principle of Irish life may begin to work? That is the question of the future.

But though Ireland thus contains at least one instance of a mixture of races not altogether dissimilar from that of England, it still remains true that, taken as a whole, Ireland is a country marked with the Celtic stamp. There, too, the power of the sea comes in. If there had been only a land frontier, it is possible that the Teutonic influence would have overpowered the Celtic. But the sea forms a sufficient barrier to cut off every new band of immigrants from the country of their origin. This isolation drives them into insular communion with the country of their invasion. Thus, however often invaded and “planted,” Ireland has continued detached.

This detachment has been apparent ever since the earliest dawn of Western civilisation. Right up to the Norman Conquest Ireland remained apart and aloof from Central European influences. For long ages she had been the rallying-place of the Celt as he was driven westward by the Teuton and the Roman. Even after Great Britain had been absorbed by the Roman Empire, Ireland still remained unconquered, the one home of freedom in Western Europe. This independence of Rome continued far into the Christian era. Ireland developed a separate Christianity of a peculiarly elevated and noble type, full of missionary zeal and inspired by high culture. That Christianity even swept eastward, and for a time dominated Scotland and England from its homes in Iona and Lindisfarne. This Irish Christianity brought upon itself the enmity of Rome by continuing the Eastern tonsure and the Eastern ritual, and finally, at the great Synod at Whitby in the year 664, Rome conquered in the struggle for Britain, and the Irish religion was driven back across the sea.

But Rome and European Christianity, as it was represented in the Roman spirit, achieved a very slow victory over Ireland herself. The English Pope Adrian gave to Henry ii. a full permission to conquer Ireland for the faith. But it was fated that Irish Catholicism should be built up not by submission to the Catholic Kings of England, but by resistance to the Protestant Kings from Henry VIII. onward. Thus it is that, even in religion, in spite of the passionate loyalty of the modern Irishman to the Roman See, Ireland still stands somewhat distinct and aloof from the rest of Europe.

But if that be so in religion, still more is it so in customs and manners. Take the analogy of a mould. The Celtic civilisation of Ireland is like a mould, into which fresh metal has been always pouring; white-hot, glowing metal from all over the world, from England and Scotland, from France, from Rome, and even from far-off Spain. But though the metal has always been changing, the mould still remains unbroken, and as the metal has emerged in its fixed form it has always taken the Celtic shape. So that to-day, in face of the Imperialistic tendencies of the British Empire, Ireland remains more than ever passionately attached to her nationalism, and more than ever potent to influence all newcomers with her national ideas.

It is in that sense that the question of race still remains a permanent feature in the Irish problem. It is precisely because the Irish nationality is so persistent that it is hopeless to expect a permanent settlement of her government problem within the scope of such an iron uniformity as the Act of Union. It is because Ireland nurses this “unconquerable hope” that the only golden key to these difficulties lies in some form of self-government.

THE CREED

But besides the sea and the race, there is yet one more feature of the Irish problem which remains practically unchanged. Ireland still remains predominantly Catholic, while Great Britain is still predominantly Protestant. The great movement of the sixteenth century, known as the Reformation, passed from Germany through Holland and France into Great Britain. It won Scotland completely. In England, after a prolonged struggle with a powerful Catholic tradition, it ended in the compromise still represented by the Anglican Church. But there the victory of the Reformation closed. The movement was checked at St. George’s Channel. In Ireland Catholicism stood with its back against the Atlantic, and fought a stern, long fight against all the political and social forces of the British Empire. The attack of Protestantism was supported by the full power and authority of the conqueror. It lasted for two centuries. It began with Elizabeth and James as a simple imperative, mercilessly applied without regard to national conditions. It came under Cromwell as a scorching, devastating flame. It remained under William and the Georges as a slow, cruel torture applied through all the avenues of the law. The end of all that effort was, not to convert or destroy, but to weld the national and religious spirits into one common force, acting together throughout the nineteenth century as if identical.

Purified by persecution, Catholicism in Ireland, almost alone among the religions of Western Europe, stands out still to-day as a great national and democratic force.

But though the persecution failed, it built up, by a double process of immigration and monopoly, a very powerful Protestant population with all the stiff pride of ascendancy. For generations the Protestants of Ireland enjoyed all the offices of government, and had the sole right of inheritance. Thus both the land and the government slipped into their hands. Since no Catholic could inherit land under the penal laws, and since the penal laws lasted for nearly a century, it followed inevitably that the whole land of Ireland fell into the hands of the Protestants. That is why even at the present day the vast majority of the Irish landed and leisured classes are Protestants. The Catholics, during that dark period, became hewers of wood and drawers of water. Thus property in Ireland came to mean, not merely a division of classes, but also a division of creeds. In spite of all the great reforms, the descendants of these Protestants still retain most of the wealth and most of the Government offices in Ireland. Their resistance to any change is not, therefore, altogether surprising; and we must remember amid all the various war-cries of the present agitation that these gentlemen are fighting, not merely for the integrity of the Empire, but also for position, income and power.

This state of affairs has varied very little for the last half-century.

The Census of 1911 contains, like most previous Irish Census returns, a schedule asking for a statement of religious faith. That enables us to tell with comparative accuracy the proportions between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland since 1861, when the schedule was first introduced, right up to the present day.

There has been an all-round decrease, corresponding to the decrease of the population. That decrease has been brought about by emigration, and that emigration has taken place mainly from the Catholic provinces of Munster and Connaught. It is inevitable, therefore, that the Catholics should have diminished more than the Protestants. The result of forty years’ wastage of the Irish Catholic peasantry is that the proportions of Catholics to Protestants are now three to one, as against four to one in 1861. Allowing for the great fact of westward emigration, this means that the relations between these two forms of Christianity in Ireland are practically stationary.

The Protestants, too, we must not forget, are divided into two sects Episcopalian and Presbyterian which in their history have been almost divided from one another as Catholicism and Protestantism, so much so that several times in Irish history as, for instance, in 1798 the Catholic and Presbyterian have been brought together by a common persecution at the hands of the Episcopalian.

We must also bear in mind that the Protestants are mainly concentrated in the two provinces of Ulster and Leinster. Ulster contains nearly all the Irish Presbyterians 421,000 out of 439,000 men who are rather Scotch by descent than actually native Irish. Ulster also contains 366,000 Episcopalians, making, with 48,000 Methodists, 835,000 Protestants in Ulster, out of 1,075,000 in the whole of Ireland. The rest of the Episcopalians are in Leinster round Dublin where 140,000 are domiciled. Munster contains less than 60,000 Protestants in all, and Connaught contains little over 20,000. It is practically a Catholic province.

The great fact about this religious situation in Ireland, therefore, is that you have a Catholic country with a strong Protestant minority.

We are asked to believe that this presents an insuperable obstacle to the gift of self-government. But Ireland does not stand alone in this respect. There are many other countries in the world where the same difficulty has been faced and overcome. Take the German Empire. It has included since 1870 the great state of Bavaria, where the great struggle of the Reformation ended with honours divided.

Strangely enough, the proportions are almost precisely the same as in Ireland. But this state of affairs has not prevented the German Empire from leaving to Bavaria, not merely a king and parliament, but also an army subject to purely Bavarian control in time of peace, and a separate system of posts, telegraphs, and state railways. Are we to say that trust and tolerance are German virtues, unknown to the British people?

But they are not unknown to the British people. Our own colonists have set us a better example. Canada has a far more difficult religious problem than Great Britain. She has two provinces side by side Quebec and Ontario both with the same religious problem as Ireland. In both there are strong religious minorities. Quebec is predominantly Catholic, and Ontario is predominantly Protestant.

How is this problem solved? Why, by Home Rule. For a long time from 1840 to 1887 Canada made the experiment of governing these two provinces under one Parliament and from one centre. That experiment never succeeded. As long as they were under one government, the minority in each of these provinces insisted on appealing for help to the majority in the other. There arose the evil of “Ascendancy “ the government of a majority by a minority. At last the Canadians faced the problem. In 1867 they divided the provinces, and gave them each a Home Rule government of their own, subject to the Dominion Parliament. Since then there has been no more trouble about Ascendancy. Quebec and Ontario now settle their own affairs, including Education and all other local matters, and no one ever hears anything about the ill-treatment of minorities.

So much, then, for the permanent factors Sea, Race, and Religion. There is no insuperable obstacle there. Rather it is here in these great dominating facts that the strongest argument for Home Rule must ever be found. For it is those things that constitute nationality.

The real difficulties in the way of Home Rule were found, both in 1886 and 1893, not in these permanent things, but in the changing facets of human laws. It was the Land Question that in all the speeches of 1886 provided the strongest argument. It was the absence of local government, and the presumed incapacity for local government, that filled so many Unionist speeches. It was the quarrel over University Education that provided the best evidence of incompatibility of temper between Irish Catholic and Irish Protestant.

I shall show that in all these respects the problem has completely and radically changed since 1893.