The New Irish Constitution Part 4

(6) Crop Failure, Famine Relief.

(7) Labour questions, Housing of the working-cla.s.ses.

(8) Audit of Local Accounts.

(9) Registry, etc., of Letters.

_Group V.-Public Works._ (1) Roads and Buildings.

(2) Railways and Ca.n.a.ls.

(3) Marine Works.

(4) Drainage, Irrigation and Reclamation.

(5) Mines and Minerals.

(6) Registry of Letters.

_Group VI.-Agriculture._ (1) General.

(2) Relief of Agricultural Congestion. (Congested Districts Board).

(3) Land Improvement, Seeds, Manures, Agricultural Implements, etc.

(4) Improvement in the breed of Horses, Cattle, etc.

(5) Diseases of Animals and Plants.

(6) Agricultural Schools, Experimental and Demonstration Farms, etc.

(7) Arboriculture, Afforestation.

(8) Registry of Letters.

_Group VII.-The Land Commission._ (1) Land Purchase.

(2) Relief of Congestion.

(3) Recovery of Annuities and Sinking Fund.

(4) Fixation of Judicial Rents.

(5) Registry, etc., of Letters.

_Group VIII.-Registration._ (1) General and Vital Statistics.

(2) Deeds.

(3) t.i.tles.

(4) General Records.

(5) Friendly Societies.

(6) Registry of Receipts and Issue of Letters.

_Group IX.-General Purposes._ (1) Sea and Inland Fisheries.

(2) Labour Questions, other than Housing.

(3) Scientific Investigations.

(4) Thrift and Credit Societies; Agricultural Banks.

(5) Quit Rents.(68) (Woods and Forests).

(6) Temporary Commissions of Enquiry.

(7) Stationery.

(8) Office of Arms.(69)

Before proceeding to discuss the method by which the control of the Legislature may be most easily and effectively established over these various departments, I wish to consider whether any of them should be _temporarily_ reserved from that control. There is undoubtedly, a strong feeling among Irish Unionists, and among many moderate Nationalists, that, if Home Rule does come, Judicial Patronage, and the control over the Police, should be in the beginning reserved or excepted from the general transfer of control to the new Government which would take place when the Bill becomes law. On the other hand, the Nationalist Party are, I understand, anxious that there should be no delay in transferring the judicial patronage. They have been dissatisfied with the exercise of judicial patronage in the past: and they wish for a distribution more to their liking in the immediate future.

I have myself no fear that judicial patronage will be misused to the detriment of any party by the Irish Government of the future; but Irish Unionists are apprehensive on the point; and in my opinion something should be done to allay their fears. If the Bill should contain provisions similar to Clause 19 of the Bill of 1893, which maintained in the Irish Supreme Court two judges with salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom, appointed by the King in Council, and removable only by his Order, the Unionist apprehensions might be, to some extent at all events, removed. But as the Financial Provisions of the coming Bill will probably be different from those of the Bill of 1893, a clause like Clause 19 of that Bill may not be inserted.(70)

In that case, I think it would tend to the establishment of general confidence if the patronage in connexion with judicial appointments were, during the transition period, reserved and administered, as at present, by the Lord-Lieutenant. I think it would be good policy to abstain from every transfer of authority from the Lord-Lieutenant to which the Irish minority may at the outset reasonably object. There must be a period of transition-be it seven years or ten years or even longer-during which the minority will be suspicious of such change as I am now concerned with. I would let these suspicions wear themselves out, as in time they are sure to do with the growth of further knowledge and of that saner outlook on Imperial and Irish affairs, which collaboration towards common objects brings with it. It seems to me that in the rea.s.surance of opponents and hesitating well-wishers, and even in the immunity, for a time, from the pressure and annoyances of this cla.s.s of patronage, the new Irish Government may well find, in its infancy, satisfaction for the temporary withholding of a part of its prerogatives. It might be an instruction to the Lord-Lieutenant, that, during the transition period, (which need not be long) the wishes of the Irish ministry, in regard to appointments to judicial vacancies, should be ascertained and fully considered before the vacancies are filled.

But if this view cannot prevail then I suggest that during the transition period the patronage in connexion with the Supreme Court should, at all events, be reserved. It is highly desirable that the apprehensions of the Irish Unionists should be allayed in every practicable way.

Advantage should, I think, be taken of this opportunity to remove the Irish Chancellors.h.i.+p from the list of political appointments. Whatever strong reasons or justification may exist in England for the Lord Chancellor changing with the Government, there should be none that I can discover in the Ireland of the future, unless it be in connection with the appointment of Justices of the Peace. But fairness in distributing that sort of patronage can surely be secured by other means than a frequently recurring and unnatural change of Chancellors, whereby the Pension List is heavily and unnecessarily burdened.

In connexion with the Royal Irish Constabulary, I am clear that the control should rest, as now, with the Lord-Lieutenant (that is, with the Imperial Government) until Land Purchase has made further progress, and the new Government has gained experience of administration; but it is only fair that during this period of reservation the Imperial Government should allow Ireland a drawback on the cost of the police force, the present strength of which is excessive if judged from the Irish point of view.

The situation will, of course, be anomalous inasmuch as there will be an Executive Government responsible to the Irish Parliament yet relieved of the prime responsibility resting on all Governments-the maintenance of law and order. This anomaly cannot be avoided: it inevitably arises from the political conditions of the case. The best way of dealing with the situation will be to maintain existing arrangements which are directed by the Under-Secretary and to preserve the subordination of the Law Officers to the Lord-Lieutenant in all matters relating to the maintenance of order. But while the Minister for Law and Justice should have no control over the police during this transition period, his wishes in regard to any matter will, of course, be carefully considered; his request for the performance by the police of all duties not of a purely police character which they now customarily discharge, will be complied with, and his proposals to reduce the strength of the force, and thereby effect saving in the public expenditure, will no doubt be favourably considered by the Lord-Lieutenant if the state of the country permits.

I presume the Bill will indicate the kind of police force which in time will take the place of the existing force. I confess I am not prepossessed in favour of the plan embodied in this connexion in the Bill of 1886 or 1893. I think the best plan will be to retain the organization of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and to reduce the present force by short recruitment when the Imperial Government think that can be safely done. I deprecate the creation of a local force under the control of the local authorities.(71)

Finally, the question whether the force to be locally employed should be armed, or not armed (as the Bill of 1893 proposed), may be left to be decided at the time by the Imperial Government: but, in any case, it will, I think, be necessary for the Irish Government to maintain a sufficiently strong armed body of police in Dublin and other suitable centres to deal with emergencies.

The control over the staff of Resident Magistrates is so intimately bound up with the existing system of police administration that one cannot be safely separated from the other, and this section of Law and Justice should, in my opinion, also be reserved during the transition period. At the same time I think the services of the Resident Magistrates can be more fully utilized in the business of general administration than they are at present.

There is less reason for retaining the Dublin Metropolitan Police under the Lord-Lieutenant's direct control during the transition period than for retaining the Royal Irish Constabulary; and if the national feeling would be gratified by giving to the Irish Parliament, at once, the control of the Dublin police, I would defer to that feeling. But my personal opinion is that the Irish Parliament in its earliest days would be wise to concentrate upon self-organization, the establishment of control over the departmental system, and the taking stock of the condition of the country in all the various aspects of national life. It will then with greater a.s.surance of success take over from the Imperial Government the responsibility for the maintenance of order.

I have already referred to the Land Commission. There is a general agreement that the department of land purchase, which depends essentially upon the use of British credit, should remain with the Imperial Government. The only question is: should this department be permanently excluded from Irish control, or only temporarily excluded, the period of exclusion being in the discretion of the Imperial Government? In view of the temporary character of the Land Commission, the possibility that Legislation affecting land may be necessary before the Annuities generally cease, and the certainty that when they do cease, either generally or in any particular area, it will be desirable to remove all limitations on the functions of the Irish Legislature in reference to land, I am disposed to think it, on the whole, better to treat the Land Commission as a "reserved" instead of an "excluded" subject, and thereby make its ultimate transfer to Irish control a matter of executive action on the part of the Imperial Government. But I admit the existence of strong reasons for total exclusion, and I should not question a decision in favour of the latter course.(72) Should it be excluded, I would suggest that it shall be open for the Irish Government to bring to the notice of the Lord-Lieutenant any matters in which the administration of the Land Commission seems to be defective.

In this connexion I desire to call attention to the Congested Districts Board and the power which it at present exercises of purchasing land under the Land Purchase Acts. It is imperatively necessary, if this Board is to be retained in its existing or in any modified shape, that its work of relieving congestion and improving the condition of the peasantry of the West should be brought under the supervision and control of the Irish Legislature. But if the land purchase operations of the Land Commission are to be excluded or reserved from control by the Irish Legislature, it is very difficult to defend the subjection to such control of the land purchase functions of the Congested Districts Board. How can the British Treasury be reasonably asked to become responsible for prices fixed by an Irish body over which it will have no control whatever? Such a situation would be utterly anomalous.

The anomaly can be avoided (as suggested in my Minute appended to the Report of the Royal Commission on Congestion, 1908) by relieving the Congested Districts Board of its functions as a purchasing authority and having purchases of land made for it, on its requisition, by the Land Commission.

Having thus indicated my opinion as to the departments or sections of departments to be temporarily reserved from the control of the Irish Parliament, I come to the question of how that control should be exercised over the departments remaining on the list. In this connexion I invite reference to Clauses 20-22 of the Irish Council Bill. That Bill (Clause 19) contemplated the appointment of committees of council, with paid chairmen, to administer the departments into which public business was to be distributed under the Bill. It was my own expectation, had the Council Bill become law, that the chairmen of these Committees of Council would in course of time have become ministers for the departments concerned; but, in the beginning and until experience had been gained, it seemed desirable to give the embryonic ministers the help, and to impose on them the restraint, of colleagues. Whether the future Irish Legislature will see prudence or wisdom in this course, one can only conjecture; but one may trust that it may. In the following observations, however, and without meaning to imply any preference for "Ministers" over "Chairmen of Committees," I shall employ the word "Minister."(73)

The first Department on my list is the Treasury. Here the new Irish Administration must break entirely fresh ground and build from the foundation. An Irish Exchequer must be created, a system of Treasury Regulations and accounts must be evolved; an Irish Consolidated Fund must be established; and a Bank must be selected with which the Irish Government will bank. (Much pressure will, I antic.i.p.ate, be brought to bear on the Irish Ministry to distribute its favours in this connexion; but, it would, I submit, be highly inconvenient to keep accounts with separate banks). At present the Chief Secretary's office in Dublin Castle has a financial section, but the new Government will derive no inspiration from its procedure. It will be better to look for precedents in Whitehall.

They will show a Treasury Board composed of members of the Government but with the responsibility resting on one called the Chancellor of the Exchequer who is answerable to Parliament for the country's finances and, subject to the decision of the Cabinet, possesses complete control over them (excepting the Army and Navy Estimates). It will, I suggest, be wise for the Irish Legislature to follow this precedent, and place the Irish Treasury in charge of a Body of Commissioners (being Members of the Parliament) with a Treasurer or Chancellor of the Exchequer, specially responsible to it.

The governing principle, from the parliamentary point of view, of our financial system, is that no expenditure can be proposed to Parliament except by a Minister of the Crown.(74) I trust that the principle will be reproduced in the Irish Parliament, and rigidly enforced. In no other way can an adequate safeguard be provided against irresponsible and hasty proposals for spending public money.

The Imperial Treasury at present, exercises financial control over every department and branch of the public service (over the Army and Navy estimates I believe the control is less effective than in other directions). This is a wholesome practice, and it should be copied by the Irish Legislature with one qualification. At present, the financial control of the Treasury is occasionally accompanied by a degree of administrative interference which I venture to think is sometimes injurious to the public interests. The Treasury is deficient in administrative knowledge; and for this reason its interference has not infrequently led to inefficiency. Some administrative restraint is, of course, inseparable from financial control; but when money is sanctioned for a particular purpose, the administrative officers on the spot can regulate detailed expenditure better than gentlemen at a distance.

The new Parliament should certainly provide a Public Accounts' Committee; and a Comptroller and Auditor-General, as under the Exchequer and Audit Act of 1866; and I suggest for consideration, that the Departments should be competent to challenge, before the Public Accounts' Committee, any over-interference on the part of the Treasury in administrative details.

While I should be glad to see in Ireland the most effective check upon wasteful expenditure, I deprecate the exercise of a meticulous interference in administrative details.

The secretariat arrangements to be made in connection with the Department of Law and Justice, will depend on the extent of "temporary reservation"

to be effected. If there is to be the larger reservation, during the transition period which I have suggested above, nothing need now be done.

Matters will continue, during that period, on their present footing. If there is to be only partial reservation, the portion of the existing office staff in Dublin Castle which deals with the unreserved sections can be detached for employment under the Minister, who in this case would doubtless also hold another portfolio. When the Department is brought fully under Irish control, there will be found in Dublin Castle gentlemen specially competent to give effect to the policy of the Legislature in this Department of Irish Government.

But, whether the Judicial Department is brought sooner or later under Irish control, an early opportunity should be taken of reviewing the entire judicial organization with the view of pruning away redundancies and placing it on a more economical basis. Few will be found to deny that the existing staff of County Court Judges and legal officials of various grades is excessive; and no one, with knowledge, will maintain that a Supreme Court of 14 Judges, costing with their subordinate officers 181,209 a year, is not too costly for a country with a population of 4- millions. In the House of Commons Return (Cd. 210 of July, 1911), the number of civil servants of all grades in the Supreme and Appellate Courts of England (with their 39 judges) is shown as 461, while in the Supreme and Appellate Courts of Ireland (with their 14 judges) it is shown as 257!

The administration of Education is at present distributed between three Boards and the Irish Government and the circ.u.mstances call for drastic reorganization. The Boards of National and Intermediate Education should be abolished, and a Department of Education created under the control of a Minister responsible to the Irish Legislature. Such a Minister would find ready to his hand an official staff (working under the direction of a very competent "Commissioner of Education") which will not at the outset require any large increase.

In the Irish Council Bill a Committee of Council for Education was proposed, which provided for the admission of gentlemen not being members of the Irish Council; the object being to conciliate public feeling which is notoriously sensitive upon this matter, and to secure special opportunities for representatives of the various religious creeds of making their views felt. I believe that the liberality of that provision was very inadequately understood in 1907; but in the altered conditions of the present time, I do not repeat the proposal. The Irish Parliament, under the coming Bill, will be a stronger representation of the popular will than the Irish Council would have been, at all events, at the outset.

This change of administrative control, direction, and responsibility in respect of Education will, I trust, have a powerful effect in improving secular instruction, which is at present notoriously inefficient; but it need not (apart from any declaration of policy by the Irish Legislature), involve any change in the religious aspect of the teaching. Teaching in Irish primary schools of all creeds is in practice denominational (though not so in theory). My hope is that it will remain so. What the change will involve is the control of the Department over the appointment, the promotion, the removal, the qualifications, and the conditions of service of every person employed in Irish schools. That is as it should be.

The "Endowed Schools" are conducted under schemes which have, I believe, been settled by the Judicial Tribunals, and I do not suggest any interference with such schemes, but the efficiency of the secular teaching in those schools should be subject to the supervision of the Department of Education.

I come next to the Local Government Board, which consists at present of an _ex-officio_ President (the Chief Secretary) and three members, one of the three being Vice-President and the real head of the Board. The appointment of a Minister, being a member of the Irish Legislature, in place of the _ex-officio_ President who never sits on the Board, will convert this Board into a Department with a responsible Minister in charge. One member of the Board (not the medical member) may be dispensed with, and the Executive Establishment calls for revision. This Board comes into contact with the people in many intimate relations of their lives and on its successful administration will largely depend the popularity of the new Administration.

The next Department is the Board of Public Works and Buildings, which at present is a Treasury Department independent of Irish control. For the "Chairman" should be subst.i.tuted a Minister responsible to the Legislative a.s.sembly. At present there are three members, but one of these may, I think, be dispensed with at once. I look to this Department to confer benefits, long delayed, on the country; I would, especially, instance, drainage. Ireland stands in need of nothing more than a system of arterial drainage carried out on a large scale.

At present the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland make recoverable loans on behalf of the Treasury for land improvement and such like purposes. In the scheme indicated above, the making of these loans would come within the functions of the Finance Department. But the Department of Works would naturally be the Treasury's Agents advising on the necessity for such loans and supervising the expenditure of them, when borrowed for large betterment undertakings.

The next Department is the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction. In the scheme outlined above Technical Instruction has been brought under the Education Department, while the Congested Districts Board has been brought under the supervision of the Department of Agriculture. The Act under which the Department of Agriculture at present works provides for two Bodies, to a.s.sist and advise the Vice-President, (who, as in the case of the Local Government Board, is the working head of the department)-a Board having a veto on expenditure, and a Council which gives general advice on policy. Both the Board and the Council were devised to supply that popular element in which the system of Irish Government is at present lacking. Under the new dispensation this popular element will be amply supplied. Both Bodies will therefore be unnecessary; their continuance would conduce to embarra.s.sment and friction with the all-controlling Legislature. Both the Council and the Board should be abolished. The President and Vice-President should also disappear, and in their place should emerge a responsible Minister in charge of the Department. This Department seems to be, after the Judicial Department, the most expensively organised in Ireland. It is true that it comprises some branches which have elsewhere an independent _status_: but notwithstanding this, I am convinced that a revision of its numerous and costly establishments is needed in the interests of economy and efficiency.