400 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



till just before the presentation of the home- 

 rule bill. 



The bill "to amend the provision for the 

 future government of Ireland" was introduced 

 on April 8. The bill provided for the estab- 

 lishment in Ireland of a separate executive 

 government, solely responsible to a legislature 

 sitting in Dublin, and with complete power to 

 change the civil and criminal law, to deal with 

 existing contracts, and to regulate the protec- 

 tion of life and property. The crown, the 

 army and navy, foreign and colonial affairs, 

 trade, navigation, and currency, and the en- 

 dowment of religious bodies were excluded 

 from the scope of Irish legislation, though some 

 of them clearly were left at the mercy of Irish 

 administration. A veto was reserved for the 

 Lord Lieutenant, which was to be exercised 

 subject to the advice of his Irish ministers. 

 Another safeguard was the division of the sin- 

 gle Assembly into two orders, voting apart in 

 case of difference ; the first order to be com- 

 posed of representative peers and members, 

 with a high pecuniary qualification, elected by 

 persons possessing 25 a year, the second 

 chosen by household suffrage. In the event 

 of disagreement the measure voted upon would 

 be suspended for three years, or until a dissolu- 

 tion. The Irish representation in the British 

 Parliament was to be abolished. It was orig- 

 inally intended to give the Irish Parliament 

 control over customs and excise ; but the pos- 

 sibility of a protective tariff against British 

 manufactures drew protests from two or three 

 more members of the Cabinet, so that this pro- 

 vision was left out. The exclusion of Irish 

 members from Westminster, therefore, violated 

 tfie constitutional rule that taxation and repre- 

 sentation go together. The Irish contribution 

 to the imperial revenue was fixed at 3,242,- 

 000, which was considered unreasonably low 

 by the opponents of the measure, while on 

 the other hand Mr. Parnell denounced it as a 

 hard bargain. 



Mr. Trevelyan objected to surrendering the 

 powers of the Government to the National 

 Lengue, which had organized "terrorism and 

 outrage."' Mr. Chamberlain was not allowed 

 to state his main objection to the scheme, 

 whicli embraced the '* moral obligation " to 

 buy out the landlords, and proposed an impe- 

 rial guarantee for an Irish loan for this pur- 

 pose, originally estimated at 120,000,000. 

 He denounced the home-rule measure as not 

 providing sufficient safeguards for imperial 

 unity or for the rights of the minority, and 

 quoted Mr. Parnell as saying in a speech deliv- 

 ered in Cincinnati that the Irish would never 

 be satisfied till the "last link" that bound 

 them to England was broken. Lord Harting- 

 ton appealed for the preservation of the empire 

 "compact and complete." He accused Mr. 

 Gladstone of political immorality in presenting 

 a scheme that was not a part of the " author- 

 ized programme " of the autumn elections, 

 though that programme embraced little be- 



sides the return to power under the lead of 

 the "grand old man." Mr. Gladstone pleaded 

 that a remedy for coercion must be found, and 

 that his plan, though it had enemies, had no 

 rivals, and still held the field. 



The land-purchase bill, which was the com- 

 plement of the Irish Government bill, was 

 brought in on April 13. The amount required 

 for the credit operation was in the revised es- 

 timate reckoned at 50,000,000. Every land- 

 lord was to have the option of selling his es- 

 tate to a state authority, appointed by the Irish 

 Parliament, which would transfer the land to 

 the tenants. The money required was to be 

 advanced on the credit of the Imperial Govern- 

 ment by an issue of consols; the repayment, 

 principal and interest, was to be made by the 

 tenants in installments spread over forty-nine 

 years ; the price was to be fixed by a new land 

 commission, on the normal basis of twenty 

 years' purchase, but with power to diminish 

 or increase it, or to reject the application. The 

 rent-charge was to be paid over, together with 

 all the proceeds of Irish taxation, to a receiver- 

 general appointed by the British Government, 

 an arrangement censured by Mr. Parnell as an 

 unnecessary and offensive precaution. The re- 

 payment of the advances was to be the first 

 charge on the whole fund, which, it was pointed 

 out, might reduce Ireland to bankruptcy if rents 

 were largely unpaid. The critics of the meas- 

 ure apprehended that, if the British Govern- 

 ment undertook to buy out the Irish landlords, 

 it would have to advance perhaps 300,000,- 

 000, and that the Irish tenantry would refuse 

 to pay for the land, and leave the British tax- 

 payers to bear the expense of giving them their 

 farms at " prairie value." 



Before the second reading of the home-rule 

 bill the Liberal Unionists formed an associa- 

 tion under Lord Hartington. Mr. Chamber- 

 lain, not wishing to pledge himself against every 

 form of home-rule, held aloof from the organi- 

 zation. None of the seceders obtained an ex- 

 pression of unqualified approval from their con- 

 stituents. The Birmingham caucus enjoined 

 Mr. Chamberlain to seek a reconciliation 

 the basis of retaining the Iris!) members, 

 caucuses attempted to discipline the seced< 

 into submission. Mr. Collings, as well as " 

 Chamberlain and other early leaders, par 

 company with the National Liberal Federatic 

 Mr. Gladstone offered to recast the bill _ 

 to admit Irish representatives to the British 

 Parliament, but insisted on the principle of 

 Irish autonomy. His concession was supposed 

 to have won over enough of the followers of 

 Mr. Chamberlain to carry the bill. The re- 

 modeled bill was to be presented in an autumn 

 session. The principle of a government in 

 Ireland, with the control of affairs specifically 

 and exclusively Irish, was the question deter- 

 mined in the vote on the second reading, which 

 took place on June 7. The Irish members ex- 

 tolled Mr. Gladstone, and contrasted his pro- 

 posed solution of the Irish question with that 



