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Page 15
This is the authentic harvest of freedom.
The "unity" of the old regime which, in a Bismarckian phrase, was like
paper pasted over ever-widening cracks, was abandoned. The Separatist
programme triumphed. And the outcome? The sham unity of government has
been replaced by a real unity of interest, affection and cultural
affinity. We find administrators like Mr Lyttleton, former Tory
Secretary for the Colonies, engaged to-day not in suppressing but in
celebrating the "varied individuality" of the overseas possessions. As
for the political effects of the change, every English writer repeats of
the Colonies what Grattan, in other circumstances, said of the Irish:
Loyalty is their foible. There is indeed one notable flaw in the
colonial parallel. I have spoken as if the claim of the Colonies on foot
of the principle of nationality was comparable to that of Ireland. That
of course was not the case. They were at most nations in the making; she
was a nation made. Home Rule helped on their growth; in its benign
warmth Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa have developed
not only a political complexion characteristic of each but a literature,
an art and even a slang equally characteristic. Ireland, on the other
hand, has manifested throughout her whole history an amazing faculty of
assimilating and nationalising everything that came to her from without.
The will to preserve her nationality motived her whole life, especially
in the modern period. The declared dream of Grattan was, as we have
seen, to transform a Protestant colony into an Irish nation. Wolfe Tone
confessed the same inspiration; Emmet's speech from the dock was that
and nothing else. It was the whole of Davis in thought, and of O'Connell
in action. Isaac Butt yielded to its fascination, and found for it the
watchword, Home Rule. It was formulated by Parnell in a speech the
capital passage of which forms the inscription on his monument. It
echoes and re-echoes through the resolutions of every meeting, and
constitutes for many orators their total stock of political ideas. It
provides the title of the Irish delegation to Parliament, and is
endorsed at General Election after General Election by a great and
unchanging majority. A people such as this is not to be exterminated. An
ideal such as this is not to be destroyed. Recognise the one, sever the
ligatures that check the free flow of blood through the veins of the
other, and enrich your federation of autonomous peoples with another
rich individuality. Imitate in Ireland your own wisdom in dealing with
the Colonies, and the same policy will bear the same harvest. For
justice given the Colonies gave you friendship, as for injustice
stubbornly upheld they had given you hatred. The analogy with Ireland is
complete so far as the cards have been played. The same human elements
are there, the same pride, the same anger, the same willingness to
forget anger. Why should the augury fail?
I can hear in imagination the sniff of the unimaginative reader; I can
figure to myself his instant dismissal of all these considerations as
"sentiment." Let the word stand, coloured though it is with associations
that degrade it. But is "sentiment" to be ignored in the fixing of
constitutions? Ruskin asks a pertinent question. What is it after all
but "sentiment," he inquires, that prevents a man from killing his
grandmother in time of hunger? Sentiment is the most respectable thing
in human psychology. No one believes in it more thoroughly than your
reactionary Tory. But he wears his heart on his sleeve with a
difference. He is so greedily patriotic that he would keep all the
patriotism in the world to himself. That he should love his country is
natural and noble, a theme so high as to be worthy of Mr Kipling or even
Mr Alfred Austin himself. That we should love ours is a sort of middle
term between treason and insanity. It is as if a lover were to insist
that no poems should be written to any woman except _his_ mistress. It
is as if he were to put the Coercion Act in force against anyone found
shedding tears over the sufferings of any mother except _his_ mother. In
fact it is the sort of domineering thick-headedness that never fails to
produce disloyalty.
The national idea, then, is the foundation of the "case for Home Rule."
It might indeed be styled the whole case, but this anthem of nationality
may be transposed into many keys. Translated into terms of ethics it
becomes that noble epigram of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's for which I
would exchange a whole library of Gladstonian eloquence: "Good
government is no substitute for self-government." In Ireland we have
enjoyed neither. Political subjection has mildewed our destiny, leaf and
stem. But were it not so, had we increased in wealth like Egypt, in
population like Poland, the vital argument for autonomy would be neither
weaker nor stronger. Rich or poor, a man must be master of his own fate.
Poor or rich, a nation must be captain of her own soul. In the suburban
road in which you live there are probably at least a hundred other
house-holds. Now if you were all, each suppressing his individuality,
to club together you could build in place of the brick-boxes in which
you live a magnificent phalanstery. There you could have more air for
your lungs and more art for your soul, a spacious and a gracious life,
cheaper washing, cheaper food, and a royal kitchen. But you will not do
it. Why? Because it profiteth a man nothing to gain the services of a
Paris _ma�tre d'h�tel_ and to lose his own soul. In an attic fourteen
feet by seven, which he can call his own, a man has room to breathe; in
a Renaissance palace, controlled by a committee on which he is in a
permanent minority of one, he has no room to breathe. Home Rulers are
fond of phrasing their programme as a demand on the part of Ireland that
she shall control the management of her domestic affairs. The language
fits the facts like a glove. The difference between Unionism and Home
Rule is the difference between being compelled to live in an
ostentatious and lonely hotel and being permitted to live in a simple,
friendly house of one's own.
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