• HOW FAR THE ENGLISH UNIONISTS ARE LIKELY TO SUPPORT IT;
• POSSIBILITY OF THEIR PASSING A MEASURE OF HOME RULE THEMSELVES;
• SUPPOSED CONSPIRACY BETWEEN THE WELSH AND THE IRISH;
• REASONS FOR WELSH DISESTABLISHMENT;
• DIFFICULTY 0F DROPPING HOME RULE OUT OF THE LEGISLATIVE PROGRAMME;
• ARROGANT CLAIMS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS;
• AIM OF UNIONIST POLICY, AND METHOD OF GIVING EFFECT TO IT.

English Unionist Support

It is, no doubt, true that Mr. Bonar Law has more than once made use of language like this: "I can conceive no lengths to which Ulster may go in resistance to Home Rule in which she will not have the support of the Unionist Party of Great Britain."

Mr Bonar Law has thus signed a blank cheque on behalf of the Unionist Party for any conceivable amount of anarchy and disorder in Ulster. But Lord Lansdowne, the other leader, or rather the real leader of that Party, has refused to counter-sign it.

Home Rule in a Federation Context

(Lord Lansdowne himself, Mr Wyndham, and Lord Dunraven were among these in 1904; JJ)

"...The Government have thought out their scheme of federation about as much as they have thought out their scheme for the reform of your lordships' House; but whenever that scheme is produced, I, for one, am ready to treat it with the utmost respect and with every desire to find a solution of the problem of decentralisation. But then, let me say, even with regard to their Bill, do not let it be supposed that our attitude is merely an attitude of obstruction. If the country want this Bill we are ready to let them have it; but we ask you to put the question to the test. We are ready to abide by the decision."

What is this but a clear indication of preparations for the inevitable? Home Rule will be accepted so long as it is not called Home Rule, or so long as the Unionist Party can save its face by being in a position to say they have bowed to the will of the country. In the face of language like this, Ulster-men would be very ill advised to place too much reliance on messages from Mr. Bonar Law because he happens to be the nominal leader of the party in the House of Commons.

Nobody ever thought of him in connection with the position till he was selected, and it is a fairly open secret that the principal reason for his selection was that the other persons with greater claims could not agree among themselves.

A leader selected for the occasions like this has a far weaker position than one like Lord Lansdowne or Mr Balfour, whose families have supplied statesmen for generations and rule the country by a sort of hereditary right, and who besides were Cabinet Ministers, before Mr. Bonar Law was even a member of Parliament.

Are Irish Unionists going to lay down their lives in order that they may have Home Rule under one name rather than another?

Even if a general election is forced before the Home Rule Bill is put into operation, and the Unionists return to office, it is by no means certain we shall have heard the last of Home Rule, though the name Home Rule may be supplanted by another of less unpopular associations.

Welsh-Irish Conspiracy

It ought to be no part of my business to discuss this Bill, but so much rhetorical, or, I might almost say, hysterical, nonsense has been talked about the infamous conspiracy between the Welsh and the Irish, that, to put the Irish question in its proper perspective, it is necessary to clear away some of the hypocrisy and misrepresentation that surrounds the other one.

I shall begin by reference to a few well-known historical facts. Up till the sixteenth century England, like the rest of Western Europe, belonged to the Roman Catholic Church, though its kings occasionally displayed an amount of independence in temporal matters that should be very comforting to those who say that Home Rule means Rome Rule.

By various Acts of Parliament passed in the reigns Henry VIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, the connection with Rome was severed, and the Church of England, including that of Wales, assumed something approaching its present form, though for a considerable time its regulations were less rigid than they are at present, and it was quite possible for a minster with a Presbyterian or Nonconformist ordination to hold a living in it, while now I fear the mere idea of such a thing would be considered far more sacrilegious than that of Welsh disestablishment itself.

Under James I and Charles I the royal influence was used to mould the Church more into the model of that of Rome; under the Commonwealth it was decided to abolish Episcopacy and make the religion of England Presbyterian, which accounts for the fact that some of my readers have had in their youth to struggle with a catechism prepared by an Assembly of Divines at Westminster.

On the return of Charles II, a very strict Act of Uniformity was passed, with the result that on St Bartholomew's Day, 1662, nearly two thousand rectors and vicars (about a fifth of the English clergy) were expelled from their churches and their dwellings as Nonconformists, and were henceforth subjected to persecution very similar to that which the Catholics in Ireland suffered fifty years later.

It is only from this date that the Church in Wales has been of its present form, and all the endowments it has received since are left to it.

As to those it derives from an earlier period than this, its sole title to them is an Act of Parliament, and what Parliament can give Parliament can take away, and if it chose to take the endowments of the Welsh Church now and give them, say, to the Primitive Methodists, its act would be of exactly the same nature as what it did originally when it transferred them from the Catholics to the Protestants.

Of course I am aware that the theory of the Church of England is that the Reformation was not a change, but merely a casting off of the corruptions and accretions which had overspread the practices and beliefs of the early Church. As, however, every other Christian body that I have ever heard of, with the possible exception of the Salvation Army, makes a similar claim to be the present-day representative of primitive Christianity, it can hardly expect this claim to be admitted by its rivals, or that the fact of its making it should seem to them a valid ground for its recognition by the State rather than themselves.

Moreover, to anyone acquainted with the history of the Reformation in England, and the manner in which the Church of England as by law established came to assume its present form, if he believes it to be the guardian of absolute truth, as I admit many good men do, it must indeed seem that Providence sometimes uses strange instruments, and that there is something very like divine authority for the principle that the end justifies the means.

Reasons for Welsh Disestablishment

This fact is strongly contested by the opponents of disestablishment, but if, as is alleged, the majority of the Welsh people are Churchmen, it strengthens the case rather than weakens it, as the last ground for the maintenance of an established Church disappears when its own members do not want it.

Reference is frequently made to the good work the Welsh Church is doing, and to the fact that its disestablishment will benefit nobody, but this is not to the point so far as the Welsh Nonconformists are concerned. The real, cause of difficulty is that the prevailing theory of Anglican orders requires the possessor of them to look on a Nonconformist minister very much as the holder of a medical diploma does on an unqualified practitioner, and the fact of his being a clergyman of a State Church seems to imply an admission on part of the State of the validity of the claim.

A clergyman who left the Church of England to become a Nonconformist, the Rev. Stopford A Brooke, in a published sermon makes use of words which exactly illustrate the characteristics of the Church of England to which the Welsh Nonconformists, and indeed all members of other Churches, object so strongly. He says of the Church of England:--

"It has systematised exclusion, and supported caste in religion. It has forced the whole body of Dissenters from its forms, to suffer under a religious and social stigma. Its claims separate from itself and strive to keep down, large masses of men whose spiritual life is as deep as its own; nor does the Church recognise their religious movements as on a level with its own. Its standard of the worthiest is not spiritual goodness, but union with itself; this is not the fault of its members, but the fault of its theory; but the fault utterly condemns the theory. Many within the Church have tried hard to do what was right in the matter, to hold out the hand of union to the Nonconformists, but they have failed- and must fail. The theory of the Church is too strong for them."

Thus the Welsh demand is a demand for equality, which the Irish would in any case support on general principles, whether they obtained any political return or not.

When all the privileged classes take the same side, it is not called an infamous conspiracy, and there is nothing necessarily immoral in those who have suffered from privilege themselves helping to fight it in the case of others.

The Unionists, however, do not see things in this light, and elect to have all Wales against them as well as most of Ireland and Scotland. They have nothing to hope from the Nonconformists of England, who have not forgotten the Education Bill of 1902.

Tariff Reform is so unpopular that the dose has to be reduced to suit the strength of the patient. But even in its attenuated form it fails to commend itself to the British working man, who sees that its disadvantages to himself are many and certain, while the advantages it promises are few, and by no means obvious.

The Unionists rely mainly on the landlords, the Church, and the liquor interest (the mercantile classes are divided, and many of the largest manufacturers are Liberals) and as it gets the support of most of these three classes under all circumstances, it cannot be expected that these forces alone will carry it to victory.

If I might presume to tender a little advice to the Unionist leaders, and there is any prospect of their being able to drive it into the heads of those of their followers who are known as "backwoodsmen", I would recall attention to the homely proverb about the difficulty of catching birds with chaff. It was thoroughly grasped by their great predecessor, Disraeli, when he spoke of "dishing the Whigs", but has fallen into desuetude lately, with disastrous results to themselves.

A party that will give no section of the population what it wants, and simply contents itself with maintaining, and where possible, extending existing privileges, has very poor chance of success in a country where the privileged are so few and the unprivileged so many as in England at the present day.

Therefore, it seems altogether improbable that the Unionists will come back in sufficient numbers to disregard the Nationalist vote. If they come back only in such strength that a Government cannot be formed without the assistance of the Nationalists, it is practically certain that they will come to a working arrangement with the latter on the basis of some scheme of Devolution which will only be Home Rule under another name.

Difficulty in Dropping Home Rule

It is not as if the Government majority belonged to a single party and Home Rule were the only question about which a bitter controversy is raging. The Government majority is a coalition majority, and Welsh Disestablishment holds the field along with the Home Rule Bill and the Plural Voting Bill.

These three measures must stand or fall together. If the Government gives up Home Rule, the Nationalists may retaliate by refusing to support them on the question of Welsh Disestablishment. The House of Lords has obligingly played into the hands of the Nationalists. If it had passed the Welsh Disestablishment and the Plural Voting Bills, Home Rule alone would have remained, and those of the Government's supporters who are more interested in Disestablishment and Plural Voting than in Home Rule would no longer have had so much interest in the Home Rule Bill, and having got all they wanted themselves, would have had less objection to risking s General Election.

By failing to pass the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, the House of Lords has, barring miracles, ensured the passage of the Home Rule Bill as well This shows scant consideration for the interests of the Irish Unionists, who, however, are probably misled by a false sense of perspective, and imagine themselves to be the backbone of the party instead of simply a card in the Tory pack, as a Conservative leader in an unguarded moment once described them.

The piquancy of the situation is added to by the fact that Irish Protestants, as a rule, are absolutely indifferent on the subject of Welsh Disestablishment, while those of them who are Presbyterians or Nonconformists ought, according to their own principles, and the attitude they adopted when the same question was pending in regard to Ireland, to be in favour of it.

Arrogant Claims of the House of Lords

The Unionist leaders have frankly admitted this, and, so far as I can follow their argument, it seems to be that the oftener elections are held the better, since the Government thereby keeps more closely in touch with the will of the people.

It always creates some suspicion to find people more royalist than the king, and this strange anxiety on the part of the champions of the House of Lords for consulting the people at every step would have possessed more weight if they had displayed it when in office themselves, and had not overlooked the importance and necessity of doing so till they happened to be in opposition.

This claim, reduced to its lowest terms, is that a hereditary and partisan assembly should have the right to force an election on every measure about which it differs from the representatives of the people.

The House of Lords differs from the House of Commons in regard to almost every measure introduced by the Liberal Party; this would practically mean a general election two or three times a year; when so stated the proposal is seen to be an absurdity.

If the House of Lords had regarded the Home Rule Bill as the terrible monster that the rank and file of Irish Unionists are taught to regard it, they would have sacrificed even the Church in Wales with the object of defeating it, and no Irish Protestant would have shed a tear on account of that sacrifice.

The House of Lords had it in its power to make Home Rule the all-important issue by passing all the other Bills in regard to which they differed from the Government. If they had done so, their demand for a General Election on the question of Home Rule would have been a demand for one General Election only, and would have had some chance of being listened to. By demanding an indefinite number of General Elections, and by the declaration of the Ulster leaders that they will never accept Home Rule whatever be the decision of a General Election, the whole case for demanding one on this issue has been destroyed.

Aims of Unionist Policy

A tie will not help them much, and what is more likely is that the coalition will return with a majority, however small, in which case they will have to proceed to put the Home Rule Act into operation. The avowed policy of Ulster Unionists in this event is that they will refuse to obey the laws of the Home Rule Parliament and to pay its taxes, and will set up Provisional Government of their own, or rather the Provisional Government which their friends have by this time thoughtfully provided for them, will announce that its proceedings are no longer dress rehearsals, but are to be taken seriously on pain of high treason.

What is the object of this policy? Its authors have kindly explained the object, which is practically the only point about the scheme have explained. Besides the unfortunate consequence of the principle that familiarity breeds contempt which leads to a passion for breaking all on the part of those who have had too much to do with the administration of them, and a very natural ambition to sit in the seats of the mighty, if only for one week, its objects are, we are told, to make the administration of the Home Rule Act impossible, and to force Parliament to repeal it. With the prospects of securing these results I shall deal in the following chapter.

Notes and References Ch 4

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1998