A Leap in the Dark Part 9

This is the suggested argument--let us consider its validity.

As to federalism.--All the conditions which make a federal const.i.tution work successfully in the United States, in Switzerland, and possibly in Germany, are wanting in England and Ireland. No man till the last five or six years has even suggested that Englishmen or Scotsmen desire a federal government for its own sake. Whether Mr. Gladstone himself has any wish to federalise the whole United Kingdom is at least open to doubt. Where federalism has succeeded, it has succeeded as a means of uniting separate communities into a nation; it has not been used as a means of disuniting one State into separate nationalities. The United States, it has been well said, is a nation under the form of a federal government. Gladstonians apparently wish to bind together two, or shall we say three or four, nations, or nationalities, under the reality of a federation and the name of a United Kingdom. While all the powerful countries of the world are increasing their strength by union, the advocates of the new const.i.tution pretend to increase the moral strength of the United Kingdom by loosening the ties of its political unity. If any one ask why federalism which has succeeded in America should not succeed in the United Kingdom, the true answer is best suggested by another question: Why would not the const.i.tutional monarchy of England suit the United States? The answer in each case is the same. The circ.u.mstances and wants of the two countries are essentially different; and if this be not a sufficient reply, the reflection is worth making that in the three great Confederacies of the world unity has been achieved, or enforced by armed conflict.

As to colonial independence.--The plain and decisive reason why the loyalty of New Zealand to the Empire affords no presumption of the loyalty under our new const.i.tution of Ireland to the United Kingdom is this: The whole condition of New Zealand is different from the condition of Ireland, and our new const.i.tution is not intended to give Ireland the position of New Zealand. Thousands of miles separate New Zealand from Great Britain. Ireland is separated from us by not much more than twelve miles. New Zealand has never been hostile to England; her people are loyal to the British Crown. Ireland, or part of the Irish people, has been divided from England by a feud of centuries; it would be difficult among Irish Nationalists to obtain even the show of loyalty to the Crown. New Zealand is wealthy, and New Zealand pays not a single tax into the Exchequer of the United Kingdom. Ireland is poor, and, if her taxation is lightened by Home Rule, the tribute which will be paid to England will be heavy, and far more galling than the taxes she now pays in common with the rest of the United Kingdom. The new const.i.tution, again, is utterly unlike a colonial const.i.tution. Its burdens would not be tolerated by any one of our independent colonies. The rights it gives, no less than the obligations it imposes, are foreign to our colonial system. The presence of the Irish representation at Westminster forbids all comparison between Ireland under Home Rule and New Zealand under a system of colonial independence.

But the matter must be pressed further. Even were it possible to place Ireland in the position either of an American State or Swiss Canton, or of an independent colony, the arrangement would not meet the needs of the United Kingdom. This is a point which has not as yet arrested attention. For the safety of the United Kingdom it is absolutely necessary that the authority of the Imperial Government, or, in other words, the law of the land, should be enforced in Ireland in a sense in which the law of the land is rarely enforced in federations, and in which it is certainly not enforced by the Imperial Government in self-governing colonies.

In federations the law of the land is nearly powerless when opposed to the will of a particular State. President Jackson's reported dictum, 'John Marshall[118] has delivered his judgment, let him now enforce it if he can,' and the fact that the judgment was never enforced,[119] are things not to be forgotten. They are worth a thousand disquisitions on the admirable working of federalism. But there is no need to rely on a traditional story, which, however, is an embodiment of an undoubted transaction. The plainest facts of American history all tell the same tale. No Abolitionist could in 1850 without peril to his life have preached abolition in South Carolina; difficult indeed was the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law and small the practical respect paid in Ma.s.sachusetts to the doctrine of the Dred Scott Case. Unless all reports are false, the Negro vote throughout the Southern States is at this moment practically falsified, and little do the Const.i.tutional Amendments benefit a Negro in any case where his conduct offends Southern principle or prejudice. For my present argument it matters nothing whether the oppression of individuals or the defiance of law was or was not, in all these cases, as it certainly was in some instances, a violation to the supreme law of the land. If the law was violated then, why should we expect Imperial law to be of more force in Ireland than federal law in South Carolina, or in Ma.s.sachusetts? If the rights of individuals were not adequately protected by federal law against the injustice of a particular State, then why expect that the provisions of our new const.i.tution, far less stringent as they are than the protective provisions of the United States Const.i.tution, should avail to protect unpopular persons in Ireland against the legal tyranny of the Irish Executive or the Irish Parliament?

Experience of federalism is not confined to the United States. The Swiss Confederation is in Europe the most successful both of democratic and of federal polities. The Swiss Executive exercises powers common to all continental governments but of a description which no English Cabinet could claim, and the Swiss Executive is made up of statesmen skilful beyond measure in what may be called the diplomacy of federalism. Yet in Switzerland, as in the United States, federal government means weak government. Ticino is a small Canton, but from the days of Athenian greatness small States have been the instructors of the world, and Englishmen, hesitating over a political leap in the dark, would do well to study the Ticinese revolution of September 11, 1890. The Radicals of the Canton rose in insurrection, and deposed the lawful government by violence; as Englishmen may remember, the contest though short involved at least one murder. The Swiss Executive (called the Federal Council) forthwith took steps to restore order and to reinstate the lawful Cantonal government. Their own commissioner, a military officer, in effect declined to put the overthrown government back in power. Order was restored, but the law was never vindicated. A strange set of negotiations, transactions, or intrigues took place. In the Federal a.s.sembly at Berne, the Conservatives, a minority, urged the rights of the lawful government of Ticino. The Liberals defended or palliated the revolutionists. On the whole the advantage seems to have rested with the latter. A trial before a Federal Court took place, but the accused were acquitted. No one, if I am rightly informed, was punished for an act of manifest treason. It is even more noticeable that Professor Hilty, a distinguished and respected Swiss publicist, vindicates or palliates the admitted breach of law, in deference to the principle or sentiment, which if true has wide application, that 'human nature is not revolutionary, and that no revolution ever arises without a heavy share of guilt (Mitschuld) on the part of the government against which the revolution is directed.'[120] The instructiveness of this pa.s.sage in Swiss history as regards the working of our new const.i.tution is obvious; Englishmen should specially note the interconnection between lawlessness in Ticino and the balance of parties at Berne; it is easy to foresee an a.n.a.logous connection between revolution, say in Dublin or Belfast, and the balance of parties at Westminster. But this is not my immediate point; my point is that the Federal Government at Berne cannot enforce obedience to law in Ticino in the way in which Englishmen expect that the Imperial Government shall, under any circ.u.mstances, enforce or cause the law to be enforced in Ireland.

But Ireland, it will be said, is to occupy a position like that of a self-governing colony. In British colonies the Imperial power and the rule of law are respected; both therefore will be respected in Ireland.

The plain answer to this suggestion is that in a British self-governing colony, no law is enforceable which is opposed to colonial sentiment and which the colonial Ministry refuse to put into execution. One well-ascertained fact is enough to dispose of a hundred plat.i.tudes about Imperial supremacy and the loyal obedience of our colonies. Victoria is as loyal to the Crown as any colony which England possesses, yet the submission to law of the Victorian Government and people is not by any means unlimited. Ten years ago three British subjects arrived at Melbourne and were about to land. Popular sentiment, or in other words the will of the mob, had decreed that they should not enter the colony.

The Victorian Premier (Mr. Service) announced in Parliament that their landing should be hindered. The police, acting under the orders of the Ministry, boarded the s.h.i.+p which brought the strangers, went near to a.s.saulting the captain, and forcibly prevented the hated travellers from setting foot on sh.o.r.e. By arrangement between the Melbourne Government, the captain, and the three men, who were by this time in terror of their lives, the victims of lawlessness were carried back to England. That the law had been grossly violated no one can really dispute. The violation was the more serious because it excited no notice. No appeal was apparently made to the Courts. The Governor--the representative of Imperial power and Imperial justice--knew presumably what was going on, yet he uttered not one word of remonstrance. The Agent-General for Victoria, when at last a private person in England called attention to the outrage at Melbourne, pleaded in effect the plea of necessity, and described the act of tyranny, whereby British citizens were in a British colony turned into outlaws, as 'an act of executive authority.' The Imperial Government did I believe--what was perhaps the wisest thing it could do--nothing. Imperial supremacy in the colonies was, as regards the protection of unpopular individuals, admitted to be a farce. What, however, rendered the three travellers unpopular? They were Irish informers who had aided, unless I am mistaken, in the conviction of the Phoenix Park murderers. Let us now in imagination conceive our new const.i.tution to have come into being, and transfer the transactions at Melbourne in 1883 to Dublin in 1894. Will the Imperial supremacy which is supposed to be so effective in the colonies be of any more worth in Ireland than in Victoria?[121]

Were it true, then, which it certainly is not, that the conditions exist in Ireland which conduce to the maintenance of federal power in the State of a well-arranged federation, and to the maintenance of Imperial power in a self-governing British colony, this would not be enough to support the argument in favour of the new const.i.tution. For the Imperial Government needs that the law should be maintained, and the rights of individuals be protected, in Ireland with greater stringency than the law is enforced or the rights of individuals are protected either under a federal government or in a British colony. Miserable indeed would be the position of England were she forced in Ireland to wink at lawlessness such as but the other day disgraced New Orleans, or at mob law countenanced by the 'Executive,' such as in 1883 ruled supreme at Melbourne. Foreign powers at any rate would rightly decline to let the defects of our const.i.tution excuse the neglect of international duties.

If England cannot shuffle off her responsibilities, England is bound in prudence to maintain her power.

iv. _The Policy of Trust_. 'I believe myself that suspicion is the besetting vice of politicians and that trust is often the truest wisdom.'[122]

This sentiment is followed by curious and ambiguous qualifications. It is not cited for the sake of fixing Mr. Gladstone with any doctrine whatever; it is quoted because it neatly expresses the sentiment which, in one form or another, underlies most of the arguments in favour of Home Rule or of our new const.i.tution. The right att.i.tude for a politician, it is urged, is trust; he should trust the Irish leaders and their a.s.surances or professions; he should trust in the training conferred upon men by the exercise of power; he should trust in the healing effects of a policy of conciliation, or, to put the matter shortly, he should trust in the goodness and reasonableness of human nature. Exercise only a little trustfulness and the policy of Home Rule, it is suggested, may be seen to be a wise and prudent policy.[123]

How far, then, is trust in any of the three forms, which it may on this occasion take, a reasonable sentiment?

We are told to trust the Irish leaders.

My answer to this advice is plain and decided. Confidence is not a matter of choice. You cannot give your trust simply because you wish to give it. Men are trusted because they are trustworthy. The Irish Home Rule leaders as a body cannot inspire trust, for the simple reason that their whole policy and conduct prove them untrustworthy. Politicians, strange as the fact may appear to them, cannot get quit of their past.

Look for a moment at the history--the patent, acknowledged history--of the agitators or the patriots (and I doubt not that many of them are, from their own point of view, patriotic) in whom we are asked to confide, and whose a.s.surances are to form the basis on which to rest a dubious policy. They have been till recently the foes of England. This in itself is not much; many a rebel has been the enemy of England, and yet has been ent.i.tled to the respect of Englishmen. But there are deeds which neither hatred to England nor love of Ireland can justify. Even sedition has its moral code, and like war itself is subject to obligations which no man can neglect without infamy. The conspirators condemned by the Special Commission--and among them are to be found the most prominent of the Irish leaders[124]--have been guilty of conduct which no wise man ought to forget and no good man ought to palliate.

They have for years excited Irish ignorance against England and against English officials by a system of gross incessant slander; witness the pages of _United Ireland_ when Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan were in power at Dublin. The men whom we are told to trust are men who did enter into a criminal conspiracy by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoveris.h.i.+ng and expelling from the country the English landlords[125]; they are men found guilty of not denouncing intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but of persisting in it with a knowledge of its effect.[126] They are proved to have made payments to compensate persons injured in the commission of crime[127]; they are men who have solicited and taken the money of Patrick Ford, the advocate of dynamite; and have invited and obtained the co-operation of the Clan-na-Gael.[128] Their whole system of agitation has been utterly unlike that of honourable agitators, conspirators, or rebels; it would have excited the horror of O'Connell; it would have been repudiated with disgust by Davis, by Gavan Duffy, by Smith O'Brien, and the other Irish leaders of 1848. The men who now ask for our confidence have in their attack upon England forgotten what was due to Ireland; they have deliberately taught Irish peasants lessons of dishonesty, oppression, and cruelty, which the farmers of Ireland may take years to unlearn. Of the degradation which they have gradually inflicted upon the English Parliament one is glad to say little. It is, however, well that the House of Commons should recollect that parliamentary debates are open to all the world and that Englishmen and Englishwomen see no reason why brutalities of expression should be tolerated in the oldest representative a.s.sembly of Europe which would be reproved in any respectable English meeting. But you can sometimes trust men's capacity where you cannot trust their moral feeling. Unfortunately the Irish Parliamentary party have given us examples of their ability in matters of government which are not rea.s.suring. The scenes of Committee Room No. 15[129] are a rehearsal of parliamentary life under Home Rule at Dublin.

But the Gladstonians, we shall be told, guarantee the good faith of their a.s.sociates. Unfortunately, as judges of character the Gladstonians are out of court. The leader who first obtained their confidence was Mr.

Parnell. If the Home Rule Bill of 1886 had become law Mr. Parnell would have become Premier of Ireland, and we should have been bidden to put trust in his loyalty and his integrity. There are no Gladstonians now who think Mr. Parnell trustworthy. Why should they be better judges of the trustworthiness of Mr. Dillon, Mr. M'Carthy, or Mr. Davitt, than they were of the character of the statesman who was the leader, friend or patron of the whole Irish Parliamentary party? Note, however--for in this matter it is essential to make one's meaning perfectly clear--I do not allege, or suppose, that the a.s.surances of the Irish leaders are mendacious. They believe, I doubt not, what they say at the moment; but their words mean very little. In a sense they believed, or did not disbelieve, the slanderous accusations which filled the pages of _United Ireland_. In a sense they now believe that the Home Rule Bill is a satisfactory compromise. But the belief in each case must be considered essentially superficial. Men are the victims of their own career: it is absolutely impossible that leaders many of whom have indulged in virulence, in slanders, in cruelty, in oppression, should be suddenly credited with strict truthfulness, with sobriety, with respect for the rights of others. Even as it is, landlords are, in Mr. s.e.xton's eyes, criminals,[130] and he therefore cannot be trusted to act with fairness towards Irish landowners. Mr. Redmond holds that imprisoned dynamiters and other criminals should be released, whether guilty or not, and it is therefore reasonable not to put Mr. Redmond in a position where he can insist upon an amnesty for dynamiters and conspirators. Nor is it at all clear that as regards amnesty any Anti-Parnellite dare dissent from the doctrine of Mr. Redmond. It is odious, it will be said, to dwell on faults or crimes which, were it possible, every man would wish forgotten. But when we are asked to trust politicians who are untrustworthy, it is a duty to say why we must refuse to them every kind of confidence. Of the penalty for such plain speaking I am well aware.

It will be said that to attack the Irish leaders is to slander the Irish people. This is untrue. In times of revolution men perpetually come to the front unworthy of the nation whom they lead. To treat distrust of the leaders of the Land League as dislike or distrust of the Irish people is as unfair as to say that the censor of Robespierre, of Marat, or of Barere denies that during the Revolution Frenchmen displayed high genius and rare virtues. There are thousands of Irishmen who will endorse every word I have written about the Irish leaders. Add to this that I am not called upon to p.r.o.nounce any further condemnation upon the party than was p.r.o.nounced upon the chief among them by the Special Commission. All I a.s.sert is that from the nature of things the men found guilty by the Commission cannot inspire trust.

Power, it is often intimated, teaches its own lessons. Trust Irishmen with the government of their own country, and you may feel confident that experience will teach them how to govern justly.

To this argument I need not myself provide a reply: it has been admirably given by my friend Mr. Bryce. Every word which in the following pa.s.sage refers to the State legislatures of the United States applies in principle to the future Parliament at Dublin:--

'The chief lesson which a study of the more vicious among the State legislatures teaches, is that power does not necessarily bring responsibility in its train. I should be ashamed to write down so bald a plat.i.tude were it not that it is one of those plat.i.tudes which are constantly forgotten or ignored. People who know well enough that, in private life, wealth or rank or any other kind of power is as likely to mar a man as to make him, to lower as to raise his sense of duty, have nevertheless contracted the habit of talking as if human nature changed when it entered public life, as if the mere possession of public functions, whether of voting or of legislating, tended of itself to secure their proper exercise. We know that power does not purify men in despotic governments, but we talk as if it did so in free governments. Every one would of course admit, if the point were put flatly to him, that power alone is not enough, but that there must be added to power, in the case of the voter, a direct interest in the choice of good men, in the case of the legislator, responsibility to the voters, in the case of both, a measure of enlightenment and honour. What the legislatures of the worst States show is not merely the need for the existence of a sound public opinion, for such a public opinion exists, but the need for methods by which it can be brought into efficient action upon representatives who, if they are left to themselves, and are not individually persons with a sense of honour and a character to lose, will be at least as bad in public life as they could be in private. The greatness of the scale on which they act, and of the material interests they control, will do little to inspire them.

New York and Pennsylvania are by far the largest and wealthiest States in the Union. Their legislatures are confessedly the worst.'[131]

The pa.s.sage is the more impressive just because it is not written with a view to Ireland. No one doubts that the people of the United States, both in morality and in talent, equal if they do not excel the people of any other country in the world. But the warmest eulogist of America seeks throughout his work for the explanation of the fact which is really past dispute, that the political morality of the United States sinks below the general morality of the nation.[132] There is not the least reason why under a vicious const.i.tution the government at Dublin should not reflect or exaggerate the vices, rather than represent the n.o.ble qualities and the gifts, of the Irish people.

But the doctrine of trust takes another and more general form. You may place confidence, it is alleged, in the goodness of human nature, and should believe that the concession of Home Rule, just because it meets the wishes of the Irish people, will take away every source of discontent, and thereby remove any difficulty in making even an imperfect const.i.tution work well.

To this the answer may fairly be made, which I have made in the preceding pages, that Home Rule does not meet the wish of the most important part of the Irish people, but in truth arouses their abhorrence, and that even Home Rulers care much less than Gladstonians suppose about const.i.tutional changes. To give a man a vote for a Parliament at Dublin when he is demanding an acre or two of land, comes very near giving him a stone when he asks for bread. But I a.s.sume for a moment that the Irishmen, who express no great enthusiasm for the Home Rule Bill, desire the new const.i.tution as ardently as sixty years or so ago our fathers desired parliamentary reform. Yet even on this a.s.sumption the belief in Home Rule as a panacea for Irish ills is childish, and belongs to a bygone stage of opinion. We now know that changes in political machinery, however important, do not of themselves produce content. A poverty-stricken peasant in Connaught will not be made happy because a Parliament meets at Dublin. We now further know that the difficulty of satisfying popular aspirations often arises from the fundamental faults of human nature. Trust in the people may often be wiser than distrust, but to suppose that ma.s.ses of men are wiser, more reasonable, or more virtuous than the individuals of which they consist, is as idle a political delusion as the corresponding ecclesiastical delusion that a church has virtues denied to the believers who make up the church. On this point an anecdote makes my meaning clearer than an argument. On May 15, 1848, the French National a.s.sembly was invaded by an armed mob, who shouted and yelled for three hours and more, and threatened at any moment to slaughter the representatives of France.

From June 22-26, 1848, there raged the most terrible of the insurrections which Paris has seen. For the first time in modern history the workmen of the capital rose against the body of the more or less well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in their homes. Between these days of ferocity intervened a day of sentiment. On May 21, 1848, the a.s.sembly attended a Feast of Concord.

There were carts filled with allegorical figures, there were processions, there were embraces; the whole town, soldiers, national guards, gardes mobiles, armed workmen, a million of men or more, pa.s.sed in array before the deputies. The feast was a feast of concord, but every deputy had provided himself with pistols or some weapon of defence. This was the occasion when we are told by the reporter of the scene, 'Carnot said to me with a touch of that silliness (_niaiserie_) which is always to be found mixed up with the virtues of honest democrats, "Believe me, my dear colleague, you must always trust the people." I remember I answered him rather rudely, "Ah! why didn't you remind me of that on the day before May 15?"' The anecdote is told by the greatest political thinker whom France has produced since the days of Montesquieu. 'Trust in the people' did not appear the last word of political wisdom to Alexis de Tocqueville.[133]

The Gladstonian pleas to which answer has been made are, it will be said, arguments not in favour of our new const.i.tution, but in support of Home Rule. The remark is just; it points to a curious weakness in the reasoning of Gladstonians. They adduce many reasons of more or less weight for conceding some kind of Home Rule to Ireland. But few indeed are the reasons put forward, either in the House of Commons or elsewhere, in favour of the actual Home Rule Bill of 1893. As to the merits of this definite measure Ministerialists show a singular reticence. It may be that they wish to save time and hold that the measure commends itself without any recommendation by force of its own inherent merits. But to a critic of the new const.i.tution another explanation suggests itself. Can it be possible that Ministerialists themselves are not certain what are the fixed principles of the new policy? Everything about it is indefinite, vague, uncertain. Who can say with a.s.surance what Gladstonians understand by Imperial supremacy? Is there or is there not any idea of excluding Ulster from the operation of the Bill? Is it or is it not a principle that members from Ireland shall be summoned to Westminster? Are the Irish members, if summoned, to vote on all matters, or on some only? To each of these questions the only answer that can be given is--n.o.body knows. But in this state of ignorance it is natural and excusable that apologists should confine themselves to general lines of defence. No politician who respects himself would willingly risk a vigorous apology for the special provisions of a particular measure, when, for aught he knows, the provision which he thinks essential turns out to be an unimportant detail, and is liable to sudden variation.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] 'I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to alter yours.... But hereafter they may be of some use to you, in some future form which your commonwealth may take. In the present it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pa.s.s, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried being," and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood.'--_Burke's Works_, ii. (ed. 1872), p. 517, 'Reflections on the Revolution in France.'

[109] As to the general causes of the strength of the Home Rule movement in England, and the general considerations in its favour, see _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), ch. iii. and iv. pp. 34-127. From the opinions expressed in these chapters I see no reason for receding.

[110] Mr. M'Carthy, April 10, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debate_, 353.

[111] [May 6, 1882. Now twenty-nine years back.]

[112] Every one should read Mr. Lecky's letter of April 4, 1893, addressed to the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, and printed in the _Chamber's Reply_ to Mr. Gladstone's speech. It deals immediately not with the relations between England and Ireland, but with the alleged prosperity of Ireland under Grattan's Const.i.tution. But in principle it applies to the point here discussed, and I venture to say that every page of Mr. Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ which refers to Grattan's Parliament bears out the contention, that no inference can be drawn from it as to the successful working, as regards either England or Ireland, of the legislature to be const.i.tuted under the Home Rule Bill.

[113] Add also that steamboats and railways have practically, since the time of Grattan, brought Ireland nearer to England, and Dublin nearer to London. At the end of the last or the beginning of this century a Lord Lieutenant was for weeks prevented by adverse winds from crossing from Holyhead to Dublin. Mr. Morley can attend a Cabinet Council at Westminster one afternoon and breakfast next morning in Dublin.

[114] With the conclusions as to Home Rule of my lamented friend Mr.

Freeman it is impossible for me to agree. But for that very reason I can the more freely insist upon the merit of his paper on _Irish Home Rule and its a.n.a.logies_ as an attempt to clear up our ideas as to the meaning of Home Rule. He, for instance, points out that the relations between Hungary and Austria do not const.i.tute the relation of Home Rule and afford no a.n.a.logy to the relation which Home Rulers propose to establish between Great Britain and Ireland. See _The New Princeton Review_ for 1888, vol. vi. pp. 172, 190.

[115] A Gladstonian who thinks the case of the Channel Islands in point, would do well to get up the facts of their history. They were no more 'given' a const.i.tution by England than, as most Frenchmen believe, they were conquered from France. See Mr. Haldane, April 7, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 333.

[116] They have now (1911) led to political separation, happily without the need for civil war.

[117] See further on this point, Home Rule as Federalism, _England's Case against Home Rule_ (3rd ed.), pp. 160-197, and for Home Rule as Colonial Independence, _ib_. pp. 197-218.

[118] Then the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

[119] See 'Andrew Jackson,' _American Statesmen Series_, p. 182.

[120] Hilty, _Separatabdruck aus dem Politischen Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Eidgenossenschaft_ (_Jahrgang_ 1891), p. 377.

[121] For the story of Kavanagh, Hanlon, and Smith, and their attempted landing at Melbourne, see _England's Case_ (3rd ed.), p. 207.

[122] Mr. Gladstone, February 13, 1893, _Times Parliamentary Debates_, p. 307.

[123] An eminent and very able Gladstonian M.P. once said in my presence, in effect, for I cannot cite his actual words, that the difference between Gladstonians and Unionists was a difference in their judgment of character or of human nature. He touched I believe far more nearly than do most politicians the root of the differences which divide the authors and the critics of our new const.i.tution.

[124] Report of Special Commission, pp. 54, 55.

[125] _Ibid_. pp. 53, 119.

[126] _Ibid_. pp. 119, 120.

[127] Report of Special Commission, p. 120.

[128] _Ibid_.

[129] This Committee Room was the scene of the desertion of Parnell by the majority of his former followers.