|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 29
As for the old "Ulster," it remains a problem not for the War Office,
but for the Department of Education.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MECHANICS OF HOME RULE
The inevitableness of Home Rule resides in the fact that it is, as one
might say, a biped among ideas. It marches to triumph on two feet, an
Irish and an Imperial foot. If there were in Ireland no demand whatever
for self-government it would, nevertheless, be necessary in the
interests of the Empire to force it on her. The human, or as some people
may prefer to call it, the sociological case for Home Rule, and the
historical case for it have already been outlined. We now turn to
consideration, of another order, derived from Political Mechanics, or
rather bearing on the mere mechanism of politics. Let us approach the
problem first from the Imperial side.
On the whole, the most remarkable thing about the British Empire is that
there is no British Empire. We are in presence of the familiar
distinction between the raw material and the finished article. There
are, indeed, on the surface of the globe a number of self-governing
colonies, founded and peopled by men of Irish and English blood. In each
of these the United Kingdom is represented by a Governor whose whole
duty consists in being seen on formal occasions, but never heard in
counsel or rebuke. The only other connecting links are those of law and
finance. The Privy Council acts as a Court of Appeal in certain causes,
and Colonial Governments borrow money in the London market. These
communities widely seperated in geography and in temperament, have no
common fiscal policy, no common foreign policy, no common scheme of
defence, no common Council to discuss and decide Imperial affairs. Now
this may be a very wise arrangement, but you must not call it an Empire.
From the point of view of unity, if from no other, it presents an
unfavourable contrast to French Imperialism, under which all the oversea
colonies are represented in the Chamber of Deputies in Paris. In the
English plan the oversea colonies are unrelated atoms. You may say that
they afford all the materials for a grandiose federation; but if you
have flour in one bag, and raisins in another, and candied peel in
another, and suet in another you must not call them a Christmas pudding
until they have been mixed together and cooked. Those areas of the
globe, coloured red on the maps, may have all the resources requisite
for a great, self-sufficing, economic unit of a new order. Their peoples
may desire that new order. But until it is achieved you must remember
that the British Empire belongs to the region of dream and not to that
of fact.
For many years now, apostles of reconstruction have been hammering out
the details of a scheme that shall unify the Empire on some sort of
Federal basis. For the new organism which they desire to create they
need a brain. Is this to be found in the Westminster Assembly, sometimes
loosely styled the "Imperial Parliament"? As things stand at present
such a suggestion is a mere counter-sense. That body has come to such a
pass as would seem to indicate the final bankruptcy of the governing
genius of England. All the penalties of political gluttony have
accumulated on it. Parliament, to put the truth a little brutally, has
broken down under a long debauch of over-feeding. Every day of every
session it bites off far more in the way of bills and estimates than it
even pretends to have time to chew. Results follow which it would be
indiscreet to express in terms of physiology. Tens of millions are
shovelled out of the Treasury by an offhand, undiscussed, perfunctory
resolution. The attempt to compress infinite issues in a space too
little has altered and, as some critics think, degraded the whole tenor
of public life. Parliament is no longer the Grand Inquest of the Nation,
at least not in the ancient and proper meaning of the words. The
declaration of Edmund Burke to the effect that a member has no right to
sacrifice his "unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened
conscience" to any set of men living may be echoed by the judges in our
day, but to anyone who knows the House of Commons it is a piece of pure
irony. Party discipline cracks every session a more compelling whip; and
our shepherded, regimented, and automatised representatives themselves
realise that, whatever more desirable status they may have attained,
they have certainly lost that of individual freedom. Out of their own
ranks a movement has arisen to put an end altogether to Party
government. This proposal I myself believe to be futile, but its very
futility testifies to the existence of an intolerable situation. All
this turns on the inadequacy of the time of the House of Commons to its
business. But the distribution of such time as there is, is a revel of
ineptitudes. It resembles the drawing of a schoolboy who has not yet
learned perspective. A stranger dropping into the Chamber will find it
spending two hours in helping to determine whether Russia is to have a
Czar, and the next four hours helping to determine whether Rathmines is
to have, let us say, a new sewer. The affairs of India, involving the
political welfare of three hundred millions of human beings, get one
day; Egypt, that test case in international ethics, has to be content
with a few scattered hours. And, despite all this, local questions are
not considered at sufficient length or with sufficient knowledge. The
parish pump is close enough to spoil St Stephen's as an Imperial
Council, and yet so far away as to destroy its effectiveness as an organ
of local government.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|