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Page 22
But, of course, the capital exploit of the Economics of Unionism was its
dealing with the problem of land tenure. I shrink from inviting the
reader into the desert of selfishness and stupidity which constitutes
English policy, in this regard, from the Union to the triumph of the
Land League. Let him study it at large in Davitt's "Fall of Feudalism."
We are not concerned here to revive that calamitous pageant. Our
interest is of another kind, namely to signalise the malign influence
introduced into the agrarian struggle by government from Westminster as
against government from Dublin. Even had Grattan's Parliament remained,
the battle for the land would have had to go forward; for that
Parliament was an assembly controlled by landlords who, for the most
part, believed as strongly in the sacredness of rent as they did in the
sacredness of nationality. But by the Union the conflict was embittered
and befouled. The landlords invented their famous doctrine of
conditional loyalty. They bargained with Great Britain to the effect
that, if they were permitted to pillage their tenantry, they would in
return uphold and maintain British rule in Ireland.
It was the old picture with which M. Paul-Dubois has acquainted us, that
of the "Garrison" kneeling to England on the necks of the Irish poor. In
this perversion, which under autonomy would have been impossible, we
find the explanation of the extreme savagery of Union land policy in
Ireland. Its extreme, its bat-eyed obtuseness is to be explained in
another way. Souchon in his introduction to the French edition of
Philippovich, the great Austrian economist, observes with great truth
that England has not even yet developed any sort of _Agrarpolitik_, that
is to say any systematic Economics of Agriculture. In the early
nineteenth century her own land problems were neglected, and her
political leaders were increasingly dominated by an economic gospel of
shopkeepers and urban manufacturers. Forced into the context of
agrarian life such a gospel was bound to manifest itself as one of folly
and disaster.
If we put these two elements together we are enabled to understand why
the Union land policy in Ireland was such a portentous muddle and
scandal. In 1829 the question assumed a fresh urgency, in consequence of
the eviction campaign which followed the disfranchisement of the small
holders under Catholic Emancipation. That Irish opinion, which in an
Irish Parliament would have had its way, began to grapple with the
situation.
Between 1829 and 1858 twenty-three Irish Land Reform Bills were
introduced in the House of Commons; every one was rejected. In the same
period thirty-five Coercion Bills were introduced; every one was passed.
So it began, so it continued, until at last Irish opinion did in some
measure prevail. The Westminster Parliament clapped the "agitators" into
prison, and while they were at work breaking stones stole their
programme.... But I have promised to spare the reader the detailed
hideousness of this Inferno, and this section must close without a word
said about that miserable triad, famine, eviction, and emigration. What
may be called the centre of relevancy lies elsewhere. We have been
concerned to show how Unionism, having wrecked the whole manufacturing
economy of Ireland, went on, at its worst, to wreck, at its best, to
refuse to save, its whole agricultural economy.
But why recall all this "dead history"? For two reasons: first, because
it illustrates the fundamental wrongness of Unionism; secondly, because
it is not dead.
On the first point no better authority can be found than Mr W.A.S.
Hewins, the intellect of Tariff Reform. The differences between England
and Ireland, he writes in his introduction to Miss Murray's book, are of
"an organic character." In that phrase is concentrated the whole biology
of Home Rule. Every organism must suffer and perish unless its external
circumstances echo its inner law of development. The sin of the Union
was that it imposed on Ireland from without a sort of spiked
strait-jacket which could have no effect but to squeeze the blood and
breath out of every interest in the country. What was meat to England
was poison to Ireland, and even honest Englishmen, hypnotised by the
economists of the day, were unable to perceive this plain truth. Let me
give another illustration. The capital exploit of Union Economics was,
as has been said, its dealing with the land question, but perhaps its
most pathetic fallacy was the policy with which it met the Great Famine.
Now the singular thing about this famine is that during it there was no
scarcity of food in Ireland; there was only a shortage of potatoes.
"In 1847 alone," writes Mr Michael Davitt in his "Fall of
Feudalism," "food to the value of �44,958,000 sterling was grown in
Ireland according to the statistical returns for that year. But a
million of people died for want of food all the same."
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