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IRISH
FEDEBALISM!
ITS MEANING, ITS OBJECTS,
AND
ITS HOPES.
BY
ISAAC IZUTT, (9.0. M.P.
FOURTH EDITION.
DUBLIN:
THE IRISH HOME RULE LEAGUE.
29, LOWER SACKVILLE STREET.
-
I874.
DUBLIN! PRINTED BY R. CHAPMAN, TEMPLE-LANE, DAME-ST.
late-classed 3 '23-: 5.0. 0 M
ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

I OFFER no apology for the appearance at the present moment of this
tract upon a‘? Subject which is every day more and more occupying the
attention of the Irish nation.
A very few words will explain the motive and object with which it has
been written.
I have long since had the conviction forced upon me that it is equally
essential to the safety of_England and to the happiness and tranquillity
of Ireland, that the right of self-government should be restored to this
country.
' Reﬂecting on all the difficulties which surround the question, I came
some time ago to the conclusion that the best prospect of uniting Irish-
men in a demand for home government, was to propose a Federal Union
between the two countries.
The proposal, I need not say, is not a new one. During Mr.
O’Connell’s Repeal . agitation it had been urged by the Rev. Mr.
O’Malley in a series of letters of great ability and knowledge. It was
advocated in one of the Repeal Prize Essays, which, though not awarded
a prize, was specially published by the Repeal Association.* It was
favourably entertained by Mr. O’Connell, who placed it before the pub?
lie with a very manifest indication of the leaning of his own\mind. It
is conﬁdently said by those who have means of knowing, that a plan of
this nature was assented to by some of the Whig leaders before the
return of the party to power in 1846. If so, there is no difficulty in
understanding why it was abandoned. Evil days fell upon Ireland.
The might of the people wasted away before the terrible famine that
desolated our land. Even before this, the schism in the ranks of the
Repealers weakened the inﬂuence of the great tribune of the people.
The decline of his health and energies, in itself forbade the exercise of
his old power for a year before the grave closed over him in the gloom
and depression of his country. There are men who do not hesitate con-
ﬁdently to assert that had Lord Bessborough and O’Connell both lived,
and O’Connell kept his power, a Federal Constitution for Ireland would
have been among the Cabinet measures of the ministry which succeeded
to that of Sir Robert Peel.
* Supplemental Repeal Essay. Printed by the order of the Repeal Association.
By George Ramsay, B. M., formerly of Trinity College, Cambridge. James Duffy,
Dublin, 1845. - - .
A 2
iv C
A dvertz'semem‘ to Firs! E dz'tz'on.
Even so recently as last year, Sir George Grey proposed the conces-
sion of such a constitution as the only remedy for Irish disaffection, and
inﬂuential English journals expressed their cordial concurrence in his
views.
Considering all these things, I felt satisﬁed that, even now, such a pro-
posal, if moderately and temperately made, was calculated to obtain the
the assent of thoughtful and intelligent Englishmen. I was sure that it
would meet with the approval of many persons in both countries who would
not support a measure which would simply repeal the Act of Union,
without making some provision to secure the united action of the two
countries in all matters that can concern them as one Imperial State.
I was equally persuaded that under a Federal arrangement Ireland
could enjoy all of self-government and distinct nationality which would
be necessary for the full development of her national life. Even if I
had felt less conﬁdence in the success of the proposal, my conviction
would have been equally decided, that it was essential to the interests of
Ireland that it should be made.
Public matters were not then in a condition to justify any public
agitation of the question, while attention was concentrated on the pro-
gress of legislation on the two great questions of the Church and the
Land.
I had, however, opportunities in private of discussing the views I
entertained with persons who had more power than I had of inﬂuentially
directing Irish opinion. i
A very general feeling is now entertained throughout Ireland that an
effort should be made to obtain for the country the blessings of domes-
tic government through the medium of a Federal arrangement, which
would still preserve the unity and integrity of the Empire.
I believe, however, that the time is come when the Irish people expect
that some deﬁnite proposal on the subject should be put before them.
There are many reasons which make me believe that I ought not to
shrink from a task which, perhaps, few persons would be willing to
undertake.
If I had none other I am anxious that the nature of my own views
should be clearly understood as to the nature of the project which I was
willing to recommend.
There is another motive which has had its inﬂuence in determining
'me to undertake this duty. I have been told by some persons that the
proposal of Federalism would be unpopular with the Irish people——that,
as compared with Repeal, it would be regarded as a lowering of the
national ﬂag, and that any person who would venture to bring it to the
A civerz‘zkemem‘ Z0 Firs! Edition. v
test of - a detailed plan would be sure to forfeit the favour of Irish
Nationalists. _ -
I have more conﬁdence in the sagacity and sobermindedness of “ Irish
Nationalists” than to believe this. I have satisﬁed myself that, in a
Federal Union, Ireland would take a higher place, and would exercise a
greater inﬂuence than she did do, or ever could do, under the Constitu-
tion of 1782. I propose that Constitution perfected by a Federal Union
with England. This ought to have been done in 1800. Instead of this
the Irish Constitution was destroyed. But if that proposal be unpopular
with any class or section of Irishmen, with the convictions I entertain,
this is just the reason why I should place it before them. I do not
conceal from myself that to any part I have recently taken in Irish pub-
lic affairs my countrymen have accorded an amount of personal favour
and approval which I did not seek or expect. But the very conﬁdence
they have placed in me enjoins on me the deepest obligation of placing
before them my own convictions on subjects of moment to the country,
even if I did believe that by suppressing them I might win more of their
favour or applause.
If I have approached my task with apprehension, it is certainly not
from the fear of losing “ popularity,‘7 as it is termed, with the people.
_ In the very beginning of these pages I point to the diﬂiculties which sur-
round any private individual who offersjon a great public questiona
detailed plan. I cannot, however, too strongly say that while in the
general principles of a Federal Union I have the concurrence (evidenced
by resolutions) of persons representing very different political opinions,
in the details of the proposal I make I can speak for no one but myself.
The outline I have sketched is, I fear, a rude and imperfect one, but it
will suffice to originate discussion, and to draw out more complete sug-
gestions. If this little tract shall be the means of directing practical atten- -
tion to the subject, so as to elicit the formation of a plan of Federal Union
which may recommend itself to the judgment of right-thinking men
in both countries, my object will be fully gained, and I will not regret a
step by which I know I expose myself to the risk which always attends
the detailed proposal of a novel project in 'public affairs.
If I did not believe it of the deepest importance to the cause of Ire-
land that the proposal of a Federal Union should be made, these pages
would never have been written. As it is I offer them to the Irish people
as a very sincere, although I know imperfect, effort to serve that cause
of Irish nationality with which the whole soul and heart of Ireland are
bound up. -_
This publication may be probably the only material aid which I can
vi A doeﬁitomenzf to F irst Edition.
render to the effort now making to win for ~Ireland such an amount of
,self-govemment as may give us the management of our own internal
affairs. The attempt to combine, with“ the toilsome duties of a profes-
sion, attention to the working of any political movement, imposes too
severe a strain upon the mental energies. I have, perhaps, taken my
fair share in the labours and anxieties which have attended the effort to
keep up the national~ spirit in years of depression and diﬂiculty. I must,
I am afraid, leave it to others to take up that task in easier and more
pleasant times. I will rejoice to see those who do so carry to a success—
ful issue the project, in the origination of which I shall ever, with pride,
remember that I took a part.
I. B.
DUBLIN, August 151/2, r870.
ADVERTISEMENT- TO THE THIRD EDITION.

THE demand within a short period for a .third edition of this tract may
perhaps _be accepted as a proof that the proposal which it makes is one
which has in some degree, at least, engaged the attention of the public.
Since the publication of the ﬁrst edition, some of its statements and
arguments have received singular conﬁrmation. I ‘allude particularly to
the argument founded on the impossibility of Parliament, constituted as
it is at present, giving adequate attention to the affairs of any part of the
United Kingdom. The passages in which I have endeavoured to point
out the injurious effects of this upon English interests* will not be
thought over-strained by any one who has read the recent speech of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer at Dundee. He felt himself bound to
apologize to the Scotch representatives for the neglect of pressing Scotch
interests during the last session. His apology was that English business
of immediate moment had been also set aside, and that both had been
thrust out of the way in consequence of the urgency of Irish affairs.
It requires some thought to appreciate the magnitude of this evil_
Within the last thirty years great changes have been made in the manner
in which business is conducted in the House of Commons. The direc-
tion of all these changes has been towards the abridgment of the freedom,
or at least the fulness of debate, and the curtailment of the privileges of
“ private members” as those gentlemen are termed who occupy no oﬂficial
position. They have all been made with a view of enabling the ministers
of the Crown to expedite Government business through the House. The
subject is a large one, and not to be incidentally discussed. But cer-
tainly the necessity of “getting through” the work that has been cast
upon them has induced the House of Commons to depart from many of
its ancient traditions, and give up many of the most valuable privileges
which were once considered essential protections of the independence
of its own members and of the rights of the people.. The most striking
instance of this is, perhaps, the' abandonment, after some struggles to re-
tain it, of the immemorial usage jof debating the subject of petitions
presented to the House. But this is only one of many alterations which
have really effected a great change in the character of Parliamentary
discussions of public affairs]L The change has been made gradually,
* PP- 78 79- -
T The piiactice was ﬁnally abandoned in 1842, after an:effort,persevered in for a few
viii Advertisement to T nird E dii’ion.
but it has not been without its injurious effect upon the character of the
popular branch of the legislature, and of the legislation and government
of the country.
Mr. Lowe has abundantly conﬁrmed the statement which these pages
contain, as to the injurious effects of the Union upon English legislation.
Of the description of the evil inﬂuence of the present system upon Irish
legislation, a still more remarkable conﬁrmation is to be found in the
letter addressed to me by Lord Clancarty, and which has been\(with
his consent) published in the newspapers. The pressing demand for a
new edition will not permit me to enter on an examination of the
difficulties which Lord Clancarty believes likely to impede, or at least
retard, the restoration of a Parliament to Ireland. Some of these
difficulties, I cannot help thinking, are met in the arguments of the
tract. But while I myself believe that from the constituencies suggested
in these pages (including those learned bodies which Lord Clancarty
would desire to see represented)* we would obtain a House of Com-
mons really and truly representing the intelligence, the energy, and the
patriotism of the nation, I should be very sorry to be considered as
binding anyone, even myself, to any of the details I have suggested.
The suggestions of this tract were thrown out as materials for discussion,
not as presenting the precise form which the claim for a domestic Par-
liament is ultimately to assume. I endeavoured to point out in these
pages that it is both the interest and the duty of those who occupy the
higher stations in Irish society to take their part with the people in
seeking our own Parliament, and in moulding and determining the
forms which the Federal Constitution is to assume. It is from the
joint deliberations of all classes of Irishmen that we may most conﬁ-
dently hope to present a plan of a national legislature, in which the just
inﬂuence of property, and education, and rank may be harmoniously
combined with popular privileges and power, so as to make the legis-
lature the real representative of the nation.
No testimony can be more decisive than the testimony which Lord
Clancarty has borne to the failure of the Union arrangements, and the
/
years, to devote morning sittings to the special purposes of receiving and discussing
“the petitions of the people.” Lord Brougham deeply lamented the change, and
observed that all the great questions of liberal progress in his day, including the aboli~
tion of slavery, Catholic emancipation, and even the reform bill, had been really car-
ried by the incidental discussions on the presentation of petitions.
* “ Thus, with representations from the universities, and possibly from the colleges
of physicians and surgeons, and some other bodies of that nature, we could easily
form a constituency for a House of Commons fairly representing the Irish nation.”-
Page 56.
A doorzfivomonz‘ to Third Edition. 1x
absolute necessity of domestic legislation, if we are ever to have good
government for Ireland. That testimony should be preserved in a
form that is, perhaps, a little more permanent than the ﬂeeting columns
of a newspaper, and it is added as an appendix to this edition of this
tract. -
If there were no other argument in favour of a separate Parliament
for each of the three countries, the necessity of some such measure
would be abundantly proved by the magnitude and multiplicity of
business which the demands of the progress of our social system impose
upon the assembly which now attempts to transact the business of them
all-business which would give ample employment to the energies of
three separate legislatures.
The demand for a National Parliament rests, indeed, upon higher
and more sacred grounds. Of one thing I am sure——that the desire for
national independence will never be plucked or torn from the heart of
the Irish nation. This tract was written, not to stimulate that desire--
not even so much to show that it is reasonable-as to point out the
means by which it is possible to realize that independence without
breaking up the unity of the empire, interfering with the monarchy, or
endangering the rights or liberties of any class of Irishmen.
Even at a time when popular thought has been occupied and popular
feeling engaged by the mighty events which have swept by us with such
wondrous rapidity on the Continent, the proposal which I ventured to
throw out has met with an amount of attention which I scarcely
expected it would receive. In the present condition of European
affairs, involving in uncertainty all the relations of English politics, the
time is scarcely come for Irishmen to take any energetic or decided
action in asking for the establishment of that “home government”
upon which Ireland has determinedly set her heart. N 0 one can say
how soon that time may come. I will be content if in the interim I
have contributed ever so slightly to direct the dispassionate and
deliberate consideration of Irishmen to the great practical question
which they must then solve-if, above all, I have done anything which
may accustom them to think of the attainment of national independence
as a matter that is to be achieved in peaceful relations with the English
crown and nation-and as a right that is to be demanded, not by any
section or faction of the Irish people, but with the united voice of all
creeds and classes of the nation.
I would be both unjust and ungrateful if I did not take the oppor—
tunity of acknowledging the fairness, and, I must say, the generosity of
the criticism which has been bestowed upon this tract by many of the
x A doem‘isoinenz‘ z‘o Third E diz‘ion.
English journals which' have most strongly combated the proposal it
contains. It is by full and free discussion, in which national opinions
and even national prejudices are treated with respect on both sides,
that national animosities can be disarmed. If Irishmen and English-
men discuss their international relations in a spirit of mutual forbearance
and good will, there is no difﬁculty in arriving at an amicable and
cordial adjustment of differences, which-—if exasperated by insult and
contempt of Irish feeling and sentiment—-will one day or other ﬁnd a
very different solution. \
l
I. B.
DUBLIN, Nor/moor 2nd, 1870.
IRISH FEDERALISM!
ITS MEANING, ITS OBJECTS,
‘ AND
ITS HOPES.
AT a Meeting of the Home Government Association, held on the 6th of
October, 1870.
The Right Honourable the LORD MAYOR in the Chair,
It was proposed by the Rev. J. A. Galbraith, F.T.C.D., and seconded
by john Martin, Esq. , of Kilbroney, and unanimously--
REsoLvED——“ That we feel it of great importance that public opinion
should be directed to the practical consideration of the manner in which
a Federal Union of the two countries may be carried out, and that, while
we believe that this Association ought not to commit itself in the present
state of the question to the details of any plan,we think it right to direct
the attention of the public to the plan of such a Union proposedin the
recent publication of Mr. Butt, as furnishing a proof that it is practical
to carry out such a Union in accordance with the general principles of
the Association without interfering with the principles of the Constitu_
tion or the integrity of the Union of the countries.”
,IRISH FEDERALISM.
CHAPTER I.
THE QUESTION STATED.
I VENTURE in the following pages to submit to the people both of
England and Ireland, a clear and distinct proposal for a new arrange
ment of the relations of the two countries, as a substitute for that
entered into at the commencement of the present century.
I do so under a deep conviction that the time is come when it is
essential to the interests of both countries that there should be a
re-adjustment or modiﬁcation of the Union arrangements. I believe
that a very large proportion of the Irish people are willing to accept
such a Federal Union between the countries as would give an Irish
Parliament control over all the domestic affairs of Ireland, while an
Imperial Parliament still preserved the unity and integrity of the
United Kingdom as a great power among the nations of the world.
The present state of feeling in Ireland offers to Irish patriots at least a
hope of uniting all classes and creeds of Irishmen in a national effort to
win self-government for their country. It offers to England an oppor-
tunity of (conciliating the Irish people without making concessions
which would involve revolutionary changes or endanger the stability of
the Empire. It may be that these hopes are to be disappointed. That
opportunity may be neglected. If it be so, I will not, therefore, despair
of the cause of Ireland or Ireland’s nationality-——a cause as indestructible
as the mountains of her land, or as the ocean which surrounds it. But
I am persuaded that never again will there be such an open for the
peaceful solution of questions which will one day or other ﬁnd their
settlement, no matter by what means.
It is in the earnest hope that these pages may contribute something
to effect a union of Irishmen in seeking for a moderate and peaceful
settlement of our relations with England that I venture on a task from
which every personal consideration would keep me aloof. In under-
taking to sketch out the outline of a Federal Constitution between the
two countries, I know well the diﬂiculties that must be encountered.
Experience has, even in my own case, abundantly veriﬁed to me the
wisdom of Edmund Burke’s warning against the raslmess of those who
propose legislative measures except from the seat of authority. It is
difficult for any private individual to frame details which very often
I 4 [nis/z Fedemlis‘m.


require information W111 h unaided individual resources can rarely
Command, Upon such a question as that of the relations between
England and Ireland, any pL son who proposes anything like a detailed
settlement is sure to arouse p. ejugllges and Q0 Offend ¢T0tChetS5 he
exposes his plans to criticism which of n“eC€5sity\descends into cavils,
and he runs the additional risk of wounding feelings‘xqf national honour
and pride if he suggests a settlement which falls short of‘tshe expectation
of those who have cherished-it may be exaggerated—notions of Ire-
land’s position.
Nevertheless I believe it is essential to the cause of “Federalism”
that some practical design of a Federal Constitution should be offered
for the consideration of the public. If I attempt to sketch that design,
it is not from the vain imagination that I can offer it in the precise
shape which it is likely ultimately to assume. The outline I‘ suggest is
intended rather as a framework for suggestion and deliberation than as
a complete plan. With all the diﬂiculties that attend such proposals, I
am quite sure that there are many questions upon which it is of impor-
tance that some one should take the risk of placing before the public a
distinct and deﬁnite proposal, so as to bring them from the range of
mere speculative discussion into that of real and practical deliberation.
The question of a Federal Constitution for Ireland is pre-eminently one
of these. I do not hope or indeed desire that a universal acquiescence
should be given to all the details of the proposals which I make, but I
believe that I may do an essential service to the cause of Irish nationality
by submitting a plan sufﬁciently detailed to be a practical one, and
which may, at all events, accustom men to reﬂect and reason upon the
principles which I attempt to embody in that plan.
It is in this spirit, and this spirit only, that I take on myself to present
an outline of a Federal Constitution, which I believe would have a
chance of securing the support of large classes of the Irish nation, and
to which we can reasonably ask the assent of the English people. I
cannot too distinctly say that for the proposals I make no one is
responsible but myself. I should be very sorry to be supposed even to
bind myself to them as the best that can be devised even for the imme-
diate object which they have in view. If we can accomplish a peaceful
settlement of the great international question between England and
Ireland, room must be left for mutual concessions after consultation
with many interests and deliberations'upon many things. If the present
opportunity for such an adjustment is let pass we may soon, in the
rapid progress of modern events, be carried far beyond the reach of
proposals like those which I now make.
Upon the general principles of a Federal Constitution I cannot do
better than quote resolutions which three months ago were unanimously
adopted at a meeting of gentlemen representing very different shades of
political opinions. These resolutions have since been submitted to a
large number of persons throughout the country, and it is not too much
to say that they have received an amount of approval and adhesion
from men of all creeds and classes, such as never was accorded to any
proposal for securing home government. A large number of gentlemen
(more I believe than 400), including landed proprietors and mercantile
i Tﬁo Question Stated I 5
men of high 5 tanding-—Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen, and ,
men of political opinions generally supposed to be irreconcilable, have
formed themselves into a committee, hitherto a private one, of which
they have declared the following to be the objects :—
“ To obtain for our country the right and privilege of managing our
own affairs, by a Parliament assembled in Ireland, composed of her
Majesty the Sovereign, or her successors, and the Lords and Commons
of Ireland.
“To secure for that Parliament, under a Federal arrangement, the
right of legislating for and regulating all matters relating to the internal
affairs of Ireland, and control over Irish resources and revenues, subject
to the obligation of contributing our' just proportion of the Imperial
expenditure.
“ To leave to an Imperial Parliament the power of dealing with all
questions affecting the Imperial Crown and Government, legislation
regarding the Colonies and other dependencies of the Crown, the
relations of the United Empire with foreign states, and all matters
appertaining to the defence and the stability of the Empire at large.
“To attain such an adjustment.of the relations between the two
countries, without any interference with the prerogatives of the Crown,
or any disturbance of the principles of the constitution.”
The committee which has adopted these resolutions includes within
it a sufﬁcient number of men representing various sections of political
opinions to give fair ground for the belief that all classes of Irishmen
are prepared to unite in a demand for a Federal arrangement, based
upon the general principles contained in them—or, perhaps, to speak
more accurately, that Irishmen generally would be willing to place their
own peculiar views as to the future of their country in abeyance, in
order honestly and fairly to try the great experiment involved in the
proposal of such an arrangement.
Beyond these resolutions no one has authority to commit any of
those who have concurred in them. I can only take on myself to
suggest a plan by which I believe the spirit of these resolutions can be
carried out, at least in all essential elements. It is one in which in
substance I would counsel all who are sincerely desirous for the estab-
lishment of Irish nationality to ask the concurrence of all classes of
their countrymen. '
The arrangement proposed is, I have said, that which is popularly
known as a Federal Union between the countries. It is not worth
while to consider whether the word Federalism, in its proper sense, be
the most appropriate term to express what is proposed. I will not even
stop to inquire whether the Union I suggest belongs to that class of
arrangements which Lord Brougham calls Federal Unions proper, or to
those which he designates as improper or imperfect, or, as is more
probable, is one partaking of the character of both. It- is enough to
say that I intend to propose a system under which England, Scotland,
and Ireland, united as they are under one sovereign, should have a
common executive and a common national council for all purposes
I 6 i v [risk Fedora/inn.
necessary to constitute them, to other nations, as one state, while each
of them should have its own domestic administration and its own
domestic Parliament for its internal affairs. I say each of them, because,
although my immediate concern is only with Ireland, I do not suppose
that if Irishmen obtain the separate management of Irish affairs it is at
all likely that Englishmen or Scotchmen would consent to the manage-
ment of their domestic concerns by a Parliament in which Irish members
had still a voice. Whether England and Scotland would still desire to
have the internal affairs of Great Britain managed by one common
Parliament is a matter entirely for themselves to decide. ~
History, it need scarcely be said, records many instances of Federal ,
Unions existing in all ages of the world. The principle has- been at all
times recognized by mankind that there may be countries so‘ united by
circumstances and position as to make it their common interest to be
i joined in one common state—-yet so separate as to make it necessary
for the domestic affairs of each of them to be managed by an adminis-
tration of its own. Federalism is, indeed, only an application of the
great principle of freedom which maintains local privileges against the
despotism of central power. From the formation of the Achaean League
to the incorporation of the North American Provinces into one dominion
of Canada, the principle has forced itself upon nations. The Germanic
Confederation, established at the Congress of Vienna, recognized it.
For centuries each of the Swiss Cantons has preserved its perfect inde-
pendence—while differing as they do in religion, in language, and in
race, they have found unity and security in one general confederation‘,
and one general diet of them all. T he, great confederation of the
States of the Western Republic is only another illustration of the univer-
sality of the instinct which teaches men that nations as well as indi-
viduals may combine, and that there is no inconsistency between the
existence of a legislature regulating the internal affairs of each portion
of the confederation and a central legislature, directing with efficiency
and unity the combined power of all. k
But, perhaps, the most remarkable tribute to the principle of Fede—
ralism is to be found in the course taken by the British Parliament in
the year 1867, when it was thought wise to incorporate into one domis
nion all the North American provinces of the British Crown. Each of
these provinces had its separate legislature and separate administration.
When the English Parliament combined them into one dominion, each
of them was left with that separate administration and separate legisla-
ture for its own domestic affairs. A common Parliament and a common
Administration were provided for the concerns of the dominion. , The
contiguity of these provinces to each other necessitated some details
which would be inapplicable to the case of England and Ireland. 'The
control of railways was, for instance, reserved to the Parliament of the
dominion lest a central State might interfere to prevent the best and
most direct communication between its neighbours. There is no reason
why Ireland should not have exclusive control over its own railway com-
munication. A similar observation applies to the Post Ofﬁce and to some
other things. The insular situation of Ireland ﬁts us for a larger share
of government than may be given to a country separated from another
r The Question Stated. I 7
by an imaginary line. The limits of the central and the local power
must depend in each Federal Union upon the circumstances and position
of the countries comprising it, and in no small degree upon their con-
stitution. We have, at all events, the remarkable fact that when the North
American provinces were united in 1867, this was done upon a Federal
principle preserving for each province its distinct Parliament. Well
would it be for both England and Ireland if the same principle had been
thought of when the attempt was made to make of England and Ireland
one country instead of the natural and reasonable plan of uniting the
two countries into one state. - -
It is obvious that in carrying out the plans of such a Federal arrange-
ment, so far as Ireland is concerned there are three general questions
practically to be settled.
. 1st. What is to be the constitution of the Imperial Parliament P
and. What is to be the constitution of the Irish Parliament?
3rd. What are to be the functions and powers of each P
Before proceeding to offer suggestions upon each of these questions
there are subjects to which it is necessary brieﬂy to refer.
This tract is not intended as a general discussion of the question of
the maintenance of the Union in its present form. It is designed
rather to show by practical suggestions how that Union may be safely
modiﬁed than to argue a question upon which the minds of the great
majority of Irishmen are made up. It were easy to show that the
necessity of a re-adjustment of the Union arrangements rests upon the
plainest practical grounds. The attempt made by the Union to give
Parliamentary government to Ireland, through the medium of the
English Parliament, increased by the addition of some Irish representa-
tives, has wholly failed. It has failed in producing the results which were
ought for by its promoters. It has failed in giving consolidation and
security to the Empire at large. The chief argument used by Mr. Pitt
in favour of the Union was that the French descent upon Ireland proved
that Ireland was the vulnerable part of the Empire. If England were
driven or drawn into war to-morrow, Ireland would present a far stronger
temptation to an invader than it did in I798. It has failed in bringing
about any identity of interest or feeling between the two countries.
There never was a period in the history of Ireland when there was
greater dissatisfaction with English rule. N o Irishman need be told
that it has failed in giving to Ireland either prosperity or peace. At the
end of seventy years of Union we are the most discontented, the most
distracted, and, with all our great advantages, the poorest country in
Europe.
There is, indeed, another view, and one by no means to be disre-
garded, in which every year’s legislation may be considered as an autho-
ritative declaration by the Imperial Parliament that the arrangement
made at the Union has broken down. By the Act of Union restrictions
were placed upon the future action of the Imperial Parliament by im-
posing on it obligations which were termed essential and fundamental
conditions of the Union. It can scarcely be denied that this arrange-
ment no longer exists. In many of their most essential provisions the
articles of Union have been deliberately and intentionally violated.
B
r8 ['I’fS/Z Fedora lisrn.
This in itself amounts to a clear and distinct confession that the arrange-
ment contemplated in these articles cannot, at least in its integrity, be
maintained. No one can read the Act of Union without seeing that
the system established by it was that of governing by a common Parlia~
ment—~but a common Parliament restricted and bound by treaty obliga-
tions with the extinct Irish Parliament. It is useless to inquire how far
such a system could possibly be expected to last. It is enough to say
that we are not now living under it. The lapse of time, the inevitable
demands of legislation, the inexorable logic of events, have displaced
the ﬁction of a treaty to be maintained as binding a supreme legislature
while there was no other party either to enforce or to release it. The
mere course of years as it carried us further from the period of the
Union, drifted us into a system in which we are ruled by an Imperial
Parliament practically unbound by any of the treaty stipulations of the
Union. It may be a better or a worse form of Parliamentary Constitu-
tion, but it certainly is not that which was separately enacted by each
of the Parliaments of England and Ireland in their statutes, in which they
attempted to bind by articles the United Parliament into which they
merged. The Imperial Parliament has been compelled to abandon the
arrangements of the Union, at least so far as they imposed restrictions
on its acts, and to legislate for us upon principles entirely and essentially
distinct. We are not now governed by a Parliament administering a
treaty of Union, but by a supreme Parliament claiming and exercising
the supreme control and absolute power of legislation, exactly as if
Ireland and England had always been one country, as if an Irish Par-
liament had never existed, and a treaty of Union never had been made.
This is a form of government of Ireland which never was agreed to by
an Irish Parliament, and one to which, in all probability, the assent of
an Irish Parliament never could have been obtained.
It may, perhaps, be said by some that, in view of the events which
are now agitating Europe, this is not the time for the discussion of a re-
adjustment of the internal arrangements of the United Kingdom. In a
subsequent page I will have something to say of the bearing of these
European events upon the Irish question. Let me now say, once for all,
that he can have a very inadequate perception either of the magnitude
or the pressing nature of that Irish question, who could see a reason for
its postponement in the possibility that complications may arise which
may involve England in the incalculable troubles and unseen perils of a
general European war. If there be any real danger of this in the aspect
of European affairs-this is the very strongest reason why we should at
once take steps to avert ﬁ'om the Empire the serious and more pressing
danger which manaces her at home. Ireland is now the weakness of
England. While our present relations last she will continue to be so.
This proposal for the concession of a Federal Parliament has not origi-
nated in the conﬂict which is now disturbing Europe. These pages
would have been written and published if that conﬂict had never taken
place. But the signs which are darkening the aspect of Europe, so far
from supplying any reason for not pressing this subject upon the atten»
tion of both countfies, only make its settlement the more urgent. I am
persuaded in my conscience that if troublous times are near us, the
T he Question Stated I 9
dearest interests of every Irishman--aye, and every Englishman--
demand that Ireland, in passing through them, should have the control,
the guidance, and the protection which can come only from a national
Parliament possessing the conﬁdence, and identiﬁed with the interests,
of the Irish people.
To those who have read ever so superﬁcially the history of the Union
between England and Ireland, it will not fail to suggest itself that the
arrangement which it is sought to alter was carried into effect at a time
when England had actually entered on the greatest war which, up to that
time, the world had ever seen. The years 1799 and 1800 were probably
among the most anxious and arduous of the great struggle with revolu-
tionary France. The despatches of Lord Castlereagh and the English
ministers on the subject of the proposal for the Union, and its reception
in Ireland, are strangely intermingled with lamentations onithegreverses
of England’s'allies, and the successes of the French arms. The nego-
ciations for the purchase of the Irish Parliament went on simultaneously
with the wars of Tippoo Sultan in India, the battles of Napoleon in Egypt,
his passage of the Alps, his triumphs in Italy, and his assumption of the
government of France. The victory of Marengo and the passing of
the Act of Union in the English Parliament were events of the same
month. It were too long to record all the events of peril and anxiety to
England which crowded into the two years of the effort to carry the
Union. The exigencies of the situation compelled Mr. Pitt, amid all
the distractions of England’s position, to turn his attention to the rela-
tions of the two countries, the state of which he thought caused weak-
ness to the Empire in the struggle in which Britain was then engaged.
A far stronger necessity must now force every enlightened English states-
man earnestly to desire a re-adjustment which may avert greater and
more pressing dangers. The Union was carried into effect to consolidate
the power of the Empire when England was engaged in the great effort
of the revolutionary war. In the events which now threaten the peace of i
Europe, and of the world, it is only by a revision of that Union that the }
same end can be attained.
It is, after all, in periods of great national emergencies that the minds of
men are roused to achieve great results. It was amid the troubles and
perplexities which followed the campaign of Sadowa, that Austrian states-
men rose to the necessity of giving to Hungary the free constitution
which has made that country the strength, instead of the weakness, of
the Austrian Confederation. English statesmen would do well to proﬁt
by the lesson before a war overtakes them, with Ireland still the weakness
of the British state.
2o ' [wish Federalism.
CHAPTER II.
THE IRISH PARLIAMENT BEFORE THE UNIoN.
BEFORE entering on the discussion of the questions stated in the last
chapter it will not be without its use to take a brief view of the
constitution and powers of the Irish Parliament before the Union.
It is of some importance that we should have a clear conception of
the powers which the Irish Parliament exercised in the days of its
independence after r782. It is of importance not only in guiding us as
to the position which we may fairly claim for our country under a Federal
Constitution, but also in enabling us to judge between the advantages
of a Federal arrangement and a simple repeal of the Act of Union,
sending us back to the state of things which existed immediately before
its passing. Certain it is that in some of the discussions which have
appeared in the public journals on this subject, there seems to be a very
great misapprehension, even in the minds of able and well-informed
persons, of the place which Ireland occupied in the old imperial con-
federacy-for confederacy it was. The relation between England and
Ireland before the Union is indeed noticed by Lord Brougham as one of
the instances of the improper or imperfect Federal Union.
It need scarcely be said that the Parliament of Ireland consisted of
the Sovereign, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons. The
House of Lords, at the time of the Union, consisted of twenty-two
spiritual peers, the Protestant prelates of Ireland-and 228 temporal
peers. Of these latter, many were wholly unconnected with Ireland by
.birth, connexion, property, or residence. The King very frequently
bestowed an Irish peerage, for naval or military services, when he desired
to confer rank and title without giving the political privilege of a seat in
the British House of Lords. Clive, on his ﬁrst return from India, had
his services recognized by an Irish peerage. To the same source may
be traced the peerages represented by the titles of Hotham and Hood.
Other Irish peerages were given for less creditable services. History
does not record the name of the English gentleman on whom George III.
‘conferred such a peerage as a compromise of his request for a private
key of St. james’s Park. It is certain, however, that a large number of
Irish peerages had been created for reasons just as remote from any
connexion with Ireland. It may well be believed that Irish peers who
owed their creation to a wish to confer on them an honorary title, took
but little interest in the political privileges which that title brought with
it. There were many Irish peers who had never taken their seat in the
Irish House of Lords. Even of the peers connected with Ireland, the
general attendance was not large, and the assemblage in the “Hereditary
=Chamber ” often consisted, in its larger proportion, of the bishops, and
the judges who had been elevated to the peerage.
__ The House of Commons consisted of 300 members, 64 of whom were
Irish Parliament hefore the Union. 2 I
returned by the counties, two by the University, and 62 by the cities and
towns possessing an open franchise and an election more or less popular
in its form. N 0 less than I72 members were returned by close boroughs
in which the nomination rested with a patron or the Crown. Only 128
out of the 300 owed their return to the semblance of popular choice.
Looking to this constitution of the Irish House of Commons, the real
cause of wonder is that it so often and so successfully asserted the
principles of liberty against the power of the English Crown.
In estimating the Parliamentary history of Ireland it must be remem-
bered that it is to the revolution of 1688 that we" must look for the
establishment in England of many of the great principles of Parliamentary
government which really give the House of Commons its controlling
power in the administration of the State. The invitation to William and
his wife to assume the Crown was accompanied or followed by an
assertion of these principles, and public liberty was protected by statutes
intended to guard the public freedom against any possible abuse of the
prerogative, indeed to make it impossible for any exercise of the
prerogative to carry on the government against the wishes of Parliament
and the people. When we bear in mind the difference in the circum-
stances which surrounded that revolution in England and Ireland, we
cannot be surprised that in this country it was attended by no similar
assertion of popular right. None of those revolution statutes, which
were considered bulwarks of public liberty, are to be be found copied
/into the Irish statute book. None of the practices on the recognition
of which the English House of Commons insisted were established in
the conduct of the Irish business. Ireland never had her bill of rights.
It is only in our own day that the law of high treason has been assimi-
lated in the two countries by an extension to Ireland of the statutes of
William and Mary. The Parliamentary business of Ireland continued
for nearly a century to be conducted according to the principles and
precedents of the Stuarts. At the period of the revolution the duration
of English Parliament terminated only by a dissolution or by the demise
of the Crown. One of the ﬁrst acts of the revolution was to limit its
duration to three years. N 0 corresponding statute was passed in
Ireland until 1767, when the country party in the Irish Parliament
succeeded in limiting it to eight years.* The Mutiny Bill was an
invention of the early years of William III., and with it arose the annual
assertion of the principle that it is unlawful to maintain a standing army
in time of peace without the consent of Parliamentj‘ In Ireland matters
went on as they had done in England in the days of the Stuarts, without
* In the interim a statute of Anne had extended the duration of the English Parlia-
ment to seven years. The bill as sent over by the Irish Parliament adopted the same
limit. The English Privy Council changed the period to eight years, in the belief that
the Irish Parliament would reject it in the assertion of a claim of privilege which
denied to the English Privy Council the power of altering any bill, contending that
their only power was that of assent or rejection. The Irish Parliament waived the
question of privilege, and accepted the amended bill.
1* It is a common mistake, but it is a mistake, to suppose that the Mutiny Act is
essential to the embodiment of an army. In time of peace the assent of Parliament
15 so. But so far as the House of Commons is concerned, that assent is given by
resolution before the Mutiny Act is brought in. The object of the Mutiny Act is to
2 2 Irish Eedera lism.
either Mutiny Bill or assent of Parliament to the existence of a standing
army in time of peace.96 It was only after the accession of William that,
even in England, the present system of voting the supplies upon
estimates, and appropriating the grants to particular purposes began
really to be in force. It was several years later that it was perfectly
established.
These and many other constitutional principles and practices established
in England when public liberty had been vindicated by the expulsion of
James, were never thought of in Ireland where that revolution assumed
the form of conquest, until a greater revolution awoke the spirit of public
liberty in the Irish mind. Their introduction, however, was gradual and
slow, and many of them had not assumed their perfect form, or received
their complete development at the disastrous period when the indepen-
dence of Ireland was stricken down. But apart from these considerations
which account for many supposed deﬁciencies in the Irish Parliamentary
system---in estimating the powers which were vested in the Irish Parlia-
ment there are other real and substantial causes of inferiority to be borne
in mind.
At no period of its connexion with England was Ireland an indepen-
dent state, that is a nation with a separate and independent sovereignty
of its own. The union of Scotland and England, like that of Austria
and Hungary, was the union of two independent crowns devolving by
the accident of descent upon the same individual—capable of being
separated (as the crowns of Hanover and England recently were) by a
difference in the laws of the two countries. The connexion of England
and Ireland was of a very different character. Ireland was always
admitted to be one of the dominions of the British Crown 3 no declaration
of Irish independence ever disputed this principle. Whatever rights “the
establish a code of military discipline, and authorize courts-martial to try and punish
offences against that code. The ﬁrst Mutiny Act was passed in 1689, in order to
supply prompt means of suppressing a mutiny which broke out at Ipswich, in some
regiments of VVilliam’s army, on their way to Holland. It was literally a Coer-
cion Act for the army, and was at ﬁrst enacted only for six months. It was found such
a convenient instrument for the maintenance of discipline that it has ever since been
kept alive by continual re-enactment with the exception of two or three years of
William’s reign in which no Mutiny Act was in force. It is now passed every year,
whether in times of peace or war. It asserts every year the principle, which was
affirmed in the bill of rights, that a standing army in time of peace cannot be maintained
without the assent of Parliament, and it recites the assent of Parliament to the main-
tenance of the force.
* Up to I779 the interference of the Irish Parliament with the army had been
limited to acts regulating the billeting of soldiers and_imposing penalties on any of them
who did mischief while they were on march. N 0 question appears to have been raised
as to the legality of punishing them by courts-martial. It may have been done under
the assumed authority of the English Mutiny Act, or of a statute passed by the
English Parliament providing an Irish military establishment in the reign of William
III., or very probably, as was attempted in England before the Revolution, under a
prerogative taken for granted in the Crown. In 1779 an Act was passed by the Irish
Parliament which was a Mutiny Act enacting a code of army discipline, and authorizing
courts-martial. It was a perpetual one, and contained no assertion of the necessity of
the assent of Parliament to the maintenance of an army in the time of peace. It was
almost immediately repealed, and from 1782 to the Union an Irish Mutiny Act was
annually passed with the same provisions and the same recitals as 'the English.
[rish Parliament hefore the Union. 2 3
:-
land ” or “ the realm ” of Ireland possessed it was inseparably united to
the Imperial Crown of England.
Up to the reign of Henry VIII, the King of England was Lord of
Ireland in right of his English Crown. In the reign of that monarch, by
a statute passed in the year I 542, the English monarch was declared to I
be King of Ireland. The title of king was substituted for that of lord,
and the “land” of Ireland became the “ realm,” but the dignity of King
of Ireland was declared to be united and bound to the Imperial Crown,
of the realm of England. The most ardent advocate of Irish nationality
never disputed this. N 0 one ever claimed for an Irish Parliamentaright
to dispose of the Irish Crown. When in I692 the Irish Parliament
recognized the sovereignty of William and Mary, their recognition was
carefully rested on the fact that the Kingdom of Ireland “ was annexed
and united to the Imperial Crown of England,” and was “depending
upon and belonging and for ever united to the same.” This inseparable
dependence of the Crown of Ireland upon that of England was generally
expressed by the maxim that “whoever was King de faeto in England,
was King dejure in Ireland.”* At all events, whatever authority could
rightfully dispose of the English Crown disposed at the same time of its
Irish appendage. When the English Parliament in 1702, by the Act of
Settlement excluded from the succession to the Crown the elder branches
of the line of Charles I., and settled the Crown upon the descendants of
the Princess Sophia, no corresponding statute was passed by the Irish
Parliament. The Irish Parliament in this instance, as in that of William
and Mary, distinctly recognized the right of English authority to dispose
of the Irish Crown. A statute was passed reciting the English Act of
Succession, and visiting with the penalties of high treason any one who
opposed the succession as directed by that Act. Another statute
prescribed the oath of abjuration, binding those who took it to defend
the succession as limited by the English statute. But neither of these
Irish Statutes attempted to conﬁrm the English Act, which was treated
as settling, by its own authority, the succession to the Irish as well as the
* This principle was not disputed in the Regency debates of 1789. The English
Parliament, in the ﬁrst incapacity of George III. , proceeded to confer the Regency
upon the Prince of \Nales, with limited powers. The Irish Parliament adopted the
course for which Mr. Fox and the Opposition contended in the English House of
gommons, and proceeded to call on him, by address, to assume all the powers of the
rown.
But in all these debates the principle of the inseparability of the Crown of Ireland
from that of England could not be, and never was denied. The leaders of the Irish
Parliament thought that a Regency was a matter which derived its authority from
Parliament, and was, therefore, within the province of the Parliament of either country.
The dispute was happily ended by the recovery of the King. But those who will think
it worth while to study the Regency debates of the Irish House of Commons, will not
fail to see that there were elements of action and principles unsettled, which, at all
events, tended to endanger the connexion of the countries under one crown. It was
this Regency dispute which ﬁrst suggested the Union. It was, at all events, made
one of its pretexts. So strongly was this felt by the patriot party that, before the
Union, a bill was brought in by them to enact that whoever was Regent a’e faeto in
England, should be Regent de fare in Ireland. Lord Castlereagh and the Government
opposed it.
In the repeal discussions of 1843 Mr O’Connell answered an objection, drawn from
the Regency dispute, by suggesting that such an enactment could easily be passed.
a
24 Irish Federalism.
English Crown. It was admitted that the English Parliament had the
right to dispose of the Crown of England, and in exercising that right
they disposed, of necessity, of the Irish Crown. '
The title of our gracious Sovereign rests, as did that of her ancestor
George III., on an English Act of Parliament excluding the legitimate
heirs of the Stuarts, and calling the House of Hanover to the English
throne. If an Irish Act of Parliament were necessary to conﬁrm that
exclusion, it might be contended that, notwithstanding the implied re-
cognition by the Irish Legislature of the English Statute, the Ex-Duke
of Modena, would be now the rightful Sovereign of Ireland?’ Her Ma-
j esty’s right to reign over us is undoubted, because the Crown of Ireland
was inseparably appended to that Imperial Crown of England, which
undoubtedly devolved on her by virtue of an English Act of Parliament
settling the succession to the English Crown.
The results of this dependence carried with them consequences of far
more importance than a mere point of national honour. The power of
making peace and war belonged to the Imperial Crown of England—so
did the power of sending ambassadors to foreign states-of making
treaties with foreign countries. To the same crown belonged exclusively
the right of acquiring dominions and dependencies. All the colonies of
the empire were the colonies of England. Ireland could neither declare
war or make peace-Ireland had no ambassadors and no colonies. The
army and the navy were the army and the navy of the English Crown.
In all these matters the King of England acted with the advice of the
* Although foreign to the purposes of this tract, I am unwilling to allow this allu-
sion to a matter, which is happily only one of historical research, to pass without
explanation.
Upon the death of the Cardinal of York, the grandson of James II., in I807, the
male line of descent from Charles I. became extinct. The only representative of
Charles I. was the King of Sardinia, who was descended from Henrietta, Duchess of
Orleans, the only daughter of Charles I.
But for the acts of exclusion and settlement he would have been beyond all question
the legitimate heir to the throne of England. But the act of settlement excluded the
descendants of Charles I., who were clearly next in succession, and transferred the
Crown to the collateral branch of the Royal Family who were descended from the
Princess Sophia, the only daughter of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, the daughter of
James I.
In I830, Charles Felix, King of Sardinia, died, leaving four daughters. The Salic
Law regulated the succession to his crown, and it passed to a distant relative, the
Prince of Carrignan. The heirship of the Stuarts devolved upon his eldest daughter,
who married the Duke of Modena, after her death upon her son. Strange that the ill-
fortunes of the Stuarts appeared to pursue their last representative, and the Ex-Duke
is excluded by a popular revolution from two far distant sovereignties to which he is
the legitimate heir.
The curious in such matters will ﬁnd the whole pedigree of Charles Felix in a tract
on the “ German Empire,” published in the second volume of Charles Butler’s Works,
Note 7, page 23 ; (see also “ history of Italy,” by Isaac Butt, vol. ii., page 375).
The clearest illustration of the position of Ireland before the Union is found in the
fact that no one ever ventured to say, or could say, that the assent of the Irish Parlia-
ment was constitutionally necessary to give validity to the alteration in the descentiof
the Irish Crown.
It is, perhaps, a small matter to observe, but no one ever thought of a separate
coronation of the sovereign of Ireland. The demand of such a separate coronation
was one of the most prized requirements of Hungarian nationality.
frish Parliament oefore the Union. 25
English Privy Council, and through ministers, responsible only to the
English Parliament.
That such were the constitutional relations of the two countries, no
Irish jurist or patriot ever denied. But, as a consequence of this de-
pendence of the Irish Crown the English Parliament further claimed the
power of binding Ireland by English statutes, as beyond all question
they had a right to pass laws for Canada and Jamaica, and the other
dominions of the English Crown. This was the great constitutional
question which was so long agitated between the two countries, and
which was ﬁnally set at rest in 1782. It is not necessary to refer to the
history of a struggle with which every Irishman ought to be familiar.
Enough to say that the English Parliament ﬁnally renounced the claim
of making laws for Ireland, and in the eighteen years which intervened
between 1782 and I800 no law had any force in this country except that
which received the sanction of the Irish Parliament.
The English Parliament had in fact attempted very little interference
with the internal affairs of Ireland. All the statutes that moulded and
constituted the criminal and civil laws of the country were either Acts of
the Irish Parliament or English statutes adopted in Ireland by an Irish‘
Act. Some statutes of the reign of William III., imposing oaths to be
taken in Ireland, and one or two Acts of the reign of Anne, disposing
of forfeited estates, and making provisions against Popery-—very super-
ﬂuous enactments in the face of the laws enacted by the Irish Parliament
itself-were almost the only interference in the internal administration of
Irish affairs. The real and great usurpations of the English Parliament
were cclrgnlegcial ones. They were chieﬂy directed against Irish manu-
factures, especially the woollen. Acts were passed by the English Par-
liament prohibiting the export of Irish manufactures from Irish ports.
These Acts were plainly violations of Ireland’s Parliamentary inde-
pendence. So were the Acts which attempted beyond the limits of the
British dominions to restrict the operations of Irish trade. It was
against these that the Volunteers asserted their independence, and the
practical boon that was won for the Irish nation was the right of the
Parliament of Ireland to control our own harbours and to regulate our
own trade.
Of course the trade‘ of Ireland was subject to the interference which
England could exercise by her dominion over the colonies and depen-
dencies of the Imperial Crown. A law which would have prohibited the
exportation of Irish goods either to England, or France, or Canada,
would have been beyond the power of the English Parliament to pass ;
but it was perfectly competent to that Parliament to prohibit the impor-
tation of those goods into England or Canada just in the same manner
as the French Government might have prohibited their importation into
France. The English Parliament was the Supreme legislature for Eng-
land and the colonies, and had just the same power of legislating against
the importation of Irish products as they would have had against those
of Holland or of France.
Thus stood the Irish Parliament in constitutional position from I782
until its dissolution. It had full and entire control over everything Irish
where it belonged to Parliament to control. The Irish House of Com-
26 Irish Federalism.
mons were absolute masters of Irish taxation. Not a penny could be
raised from Ireland without their consent; but, on the other hand, in
all the external affairs of the Empire, Ireland had no voice. The King
of England declared war and made peace by proclamations framed in
his English Privy Council, and by its advice. Treaties with foreign
powers were made by English ministers, and could only require the
sanction of the Irish Parliament if they contained stipulations which
might affect Irish trade. Over India and the colonies, the English Par—
liament exercised supreme and exclusive control. All those which we
now term Imperial affairs were entirely under the direction of the Eng-
lish Ministry and Parliament. When the King of England declared
war Ireland also was at war. Any Irishman aiding the enemy was
guilty of high treason. English ﬂeets and armies could occupy the
havens and the towns of Ireland. The only control, if it can be called
control, which Ireland could exercise would have been by refusing to
contribute any share of the expenses of the armaments of the war—
armaments that might be, that most probably would be, necessary for
her own defence against the foe.
There were other restrictions upon the independent action of the Irish
Parliament to which it is necessary to refer. So long ago as the reign
of Henry VIL, an Act was passed, not by the English, bi_1_t_ by _th_e Irish
Parliament, prohibiting the passing of any billsmnd unless their
heads had been previously approved of by the English Privy Council,
and certiﬁed under the Great Seal of England. Strange as it may
appear, it seems certain that this statute was passed as a measure of pro-
tection to the inhabitants of the Pale against hasty and violent legisla-
tion at the instance of the deputies. In process of time it obviously
become the instrument of transferring the real power of Irish legislation
to the English Privy Council, reducing the Irish Parliament to be little
more than the registering chamber of its decrees.
In I782 this restriction was removed, so far as it prevented the ori-
gination and passing Bills in either House of the Irish Parliament, but
the provision was left untouched which required all Irish Bills to be sub-
mitted to the English Privy Council, and to be returned under the
Great Seal of England before they ﬁnally became law.* The power of
* In 1782, when Mr. Yelverton introduced the Bill for the modiﬁcations of Poyn-
ing’s law, Mr. Flood moved an amendment for its total repeal. This was opposed by
Mr. Y elverton and others, on the ground that the English Government and nation
would regard the power of'veto in the English Privy Council as a provision essential
to the connexion between the countries.
In the debates on the Regency Bill it was urged by the Attorney-General that under
this arrangement the assent to Acts in the Irish Parliament was given not by the Irish
but by the English Crown. Mr. Grattan corrected this by pointing out that although
an assent under the Great Seal of England was made by an Irish Act of Parlia—
ment, an indispensible requisite to Irish legislation, the Act only became law when
after its return so approved of, the Lord Lieutenant communicated the assent of the
Crown of Ireland in the Irish House of Lords.
The answer was right in constitutional principle upon the point for which Mr.
Gratt‘an was contending, but the fact was that during the years of the independence an
assent of the English Sovereign, with the advice of the English Privy Council, under
the Great Seal of England, was required before any Act of the Irish Parliamentbecame law.
No one except Mr. Flood proposed to abrogate this controlling power exercised by
the English Privy Council over Irish legislation.
Constitution and Powers of Imperial Parliament. 27
‘the English Privy Council was not regarded as a mere speculative or
theoretical one. It was looked to as a practical check upon Irish legis-
lation. It is said-it is to be hoped not truly--that in 1792 the unani-
mity of the Irish House of Commons in favour of the Catholic Relief
Bill was produced by the belief universally entertained that the English
Privy Council would refuse their assent, and that the English ministry
returned it in spite to punish the Irish Parliament for attempting to
acquire a character for liberality at their expense. The story has pro-
bably as much foundation as most stories of the kind, but its currency
is sufﬁcient to prove the opinions entertained of the reality of the veto.
This sketch of the position of the Irish Parliament in the days of in-
dependence would be incomplete without adverting to the matters in
which they had succeeded in asserting their constitutional control. They
had established, very nearly in its perfect form, their right to control the
appropriation of the Irish supplies, and they had extorted from the
Crown the admission that in time of peace a standing army could not be
legally maintained in Ireland without the consent of the Irish Parlia-
ment. After r782 the declaration of this principle was each year in-.
serted in the annual Mutiny Bills, which had taken the place of the per-
petual Mutiny Bill, in which, in 1779, the Irish Parliament ﬁrst ventured
to assert its right to meddle with the army at all.
The true position of Ireland in the old Imperial Constitution must
never be forgotten when we come to estimate the advantages or disad-
vantages of a Federal Union with the Imperial Crown.

CHAPTER III.
CONSTITUTION AND POWERS OF THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
THosE who propose a Federal Constitution for the two countries ought
to avoid the suggestion of any change in the order of things which is not
necessary for the purpose they desire to effect.
There seems to be no necessity for any change in the Constitution of
the Imperial Parliament. It may be that changes in the mode in which
that Parliament is elected might be advantageous or desirable. Many
persons contend with truth and justice that Ireland is not adequately re-
presented. There is a very large class of persons who are anxious to
see the colonies represented in the great council of the empire, and who
regard with favour the proposal of a Federal arrangement between the
portions of the United Kingdom, because it seem to offer an oppor-
tunity for providing for such representation. But if we have a hope of
carrying a proposal of self-government for Ireland, common sense sug-
gests that we ought .not to embarass that proposal with any suggestions
of unnecessary and questionable change. I proposie to leave the
Imperial Parliament exactly as it is. If any changes are to be made in
its constitution they‘ ought to be made not as any part of a Federal
arrangement, but in the ordinary course of the exercise of the powers of
the Imperial Parliament itself.
28 Irish Federalism.
I propose, then, that the Imperial Parliament, composed as it is now
of English, Scotch, and Irish representatives, should have the full control
over all legislation affecting the Crown of the United Kingdom or the
administration of the Royal power. It ought also .to have the same
power which it has now of legislation over India and the colonies, and
over British subjects in foreign countries. In all these matters the
powers which it now exercises would be untouched.
In all matters of this nature a Federal arrangement would be a clear
gain to Ireland. Before the Union they were disposed of by an English
Parliament, in which Ireland was unrepresented. The reservation of
such matters to an Imperial Parliament would, in fact, be a concession
to Ireland.
In matters of peace and war Parliament has, by the Constitution, no
direct control. The Sovereign makes war and peace by the advice,
theoretically, of the Privy Council, really by the advice of a Select
Committee of Privy Councillors called the Cabinet, a body unrecog-
nized by the Constitution and the law, and who, in advising the
Sovereign, act, so far as responsibility is concerned, not as members of
the Cabinet but as Privy Councillors.
But at all times of the English Constitution the principle was recog-
nized that the Sovereign, in the great matters affecting the well-being of
the realm, was bound to seek the advice of the Parliament or great
Council of the nation. This duty of the Sovereign was wholly indepen-
dent of the control which in modern times is exercised by the power
which Parliament has over the supplies. It came down from the tradi-
tions of Saxon, and was sanctioned by the usages of feudal, times. The
advice of Parliament was tendered more freely in the days of the Plan-
tagenets than it is now. As the prerogative of the Sovereign in choosing
his own ministers has been curtailed, and Cabinets have become the
creatures of Parliamentary majorities, Parliaments have felt it less
necessary to interfere by way of advice. Queen Elizabeth heard some-
times with an anger which she did not conceal, remonstrances which
would not be addressed to Queen Victoria 3 and even William III. was
obliged to listen to lectures from his Parliament disapproving of the
foreign policy which he showed a disposition to adopt.
The Imperial Parliament ought plainly to be the great Council of the
Empire, with which should rest the constitutional right of advising the
Sovereign on all questions of peace and war, and of the foreign relations
of the country. It ought also to possess, in relation to these matters,
the constitutional checks which in practice Parliament possesses over
the Crown. There should be an Imperial Ministry responsible to the
Imperial Parliament, and that Parliament should have the power of
controlling the expenditure and supplies for Imperial purposes.
The Imperial Crown would still require its great officers of state;
Secretaries for War, for India, for the Colonies, and for Foreign Affairs,
would all belong to the Imperial administration; to them should be
added a Chancellor to hold the great seal of the United Kingdom, and
a Home Secretary to manage the communications between the central
authority and the national administrations. A Treasurer and Chancellor
of the Exchequer would still be needed to control the Imperial ﬁnances.
Constitution and Powers of Imperial Parliament. 29
Of these great ofﬁcers a Cabinet might be formed to advise the Sovereign
in all Imperial affairs. For their acts in that capacity these ministers
should be responsible to the Imperial Parliament alone. The Federal
Constitution should in like manner recognize an Imperial Privy Council
by whose advice the Sovereign should act in all Imperial affairs.
It follows, of necessity, from the very nature of a Federal Union, that
we must leave to the Imperial Parliament the determination and the
provision of the means requisite for Imperial defence. It would be for
that Parliament to vote the men for the Imperial army and navy—-at
least so far as they were requisite for the defence of the Empire at
large. There could be nothing to prevent the National Parliament of
either country from providing, on the requisition of the Ministers of the
Crown, a separate force, either naval or military, out of its own
resources. But to the Imperial Parliament we must conﬁde the power
which it has now of providing the naval and military armaments which,
either in peace or war, it might consider necessary for the defence of
the Empire. The power of voting the armaments would place in the
hands of the Imperial Parliament the check upon the prerogative of the
Sovereign in making peace or war. This power it would be which
would still make the representations of the Imperial Parliament really
binding on the Sovereign and his advisers. Over all such questions the
Imperial Parliament would exercise exactly the same inﬂuence that it
does now.
The question of the Imperial armaments involves the further question
—-how are the armaments voted by the Imperial Parliament to be pro-
vided? This might be done in one of two ways, either by empowering
the Imperial Parliament to levy a general Imperial tax for that purpose,
or to oblige each part of the United Kingdom to ﬁnd from its own
resources its ﬁxed quota of the army and navy required.
In many respects the latter would have great advantages. But, for
the unity and power of the Empire, it would be far better to give to the
Imperial Parliament the power not only of voting the armaments, but
also of raising the nesessary supplies. This involves the general question
of taxation, upon which it is necessary to say a few words.
There is a large proportion of the Imperial expenditure to which
Ireland would be bound to contribute. To the interest on the national
debt we must in any event contribute our share. Of the civil list
provided for the Sovereign we are equally bound to ﬁnd a part. If we
are admitted to a share in the Parliamentary control of the colonies and
dependencies of the Imperial Crown, we must contribute our share to
the expenditure they may entail 3 and if we have a voice in the foreign
relations of the Empire, we can scarcely refuse to bear our part of the
cost of maintaining them.
The Imperial expenditure may properly be said to consist,
rst. Of the interest on the national debt.
2nd. The civil list of the Crown.
3rd. The expenses of the army and navy.
4th. The expenses of foreign ambassadors and colonial establishments.
These are the expenses to which Ireland would be bound, under a
Federal arrangement, to contribute.
30 Irish Federalism.
The expenditure of the public revenue of Great Britain must be
divided into two distinct and separate classes, to which very different
considerations must be applied.
There is one portion of it which is disbursed each year by an annual
grant from Parliament, to provide which the House of Commons is
supposed to vote taxes each year.
But there is another portion of it which is paid by the Treasury
wholly independent of Parliament, and for which funds are provided
wholly independent of any vote of the House of Commons.
Simple as this matter is to those acquainted with the machinery of
British national ﬁnance, it is very little understood. A very few words
will make it plain.
At the commencement of every session of Parliament ministers lay
before the House of Commons detailed estimates of all the expenses for
which they intend to ask provision for the service of the year. These
estimates are gone through in detail, and such of them as the House
thinks ﬁt to grant are formally voted, either to the amourit asked for or
to any lesser amount which the House may- think ﬁt. At the end of
each session an Act is passed, called the Appropriation Act, embodying
all the sums which have been so voted during the session, and author-
izing their payment by the Treasury, and their application to the
purposes for which they have been voted. This Act of Parliament is the
only real legal authority for this payment, but so completely established
is the control of the House of Commons over the ﬁnances of the nation
that payments are invariably made on account of each vote as soon as
it has received the sanction of the House of Commons.
All this expenditure is, of course, under the absolute control of Par~
liament. It rests each year in the determination of the House of
Commons whether it shall be made. This includes the cost of the army
and navy, most ofﬁcial salaries, and a considerable proportion of the
ordinary expenses of carrying on public affairs.
But there is in addition to this, a very large amount of public expen-
diture for which no estimate is presented-which requires no vote of
the House of Commons for its payment, and which is met by the
Treasury without any reference to the proceedings of Parliament, or
even to the question whether there is a Parliament in existence at all.
This consists of the interest of the national debt-the civil list
provided at the beginning of the reign for the support of the dignity of
the Crown-the salaries of the judges of the courts of law and equity-
the salaries of the foreign ambassadors-some pensions to various
persons-and some other expenses which it is useless to detail. All
this expenditure has been removed from the control of the House of
Commons. It is provided for by permanent statutes, which cannot be
repealed except by an Act passing the Lords, and receiving the royal
assent. These permanentActs impose uponthe managers of the Treasury
the obligations of paying these charges as they arise-and they are
all so paid, many of them under statutes passed very many years ago.
This will be perfectly understood by an illustration taken from the
ﬁnance accounts of the year ending the 31st of March, 1868.
Constitution and Powers of Imperial Parliament. 31
In that year the entire payments out of the revenues of the country
amounted, in round numbers, to seventy-two millions. Of this sum
about forty-two millions were paid by authority of votes of the House.
of Commons adopted in that year, and embodied in the Appropriation
Act passed at the end of it.
The remaining thirty millions were paid out of the Treasury under
the authority of permanent Acts of Parliament, which oblige the persons
having the control of the Treasury to pay certain sums without any
reference to any vote of the House of Commons at all-Acts which are,
of course, the law of the land, and which, as I have said, cannot be
altered except by a statute passed by the two Houses of Parliament,
and assented to by the Queen.
But not only are these payments made without any intervention or
control of Parliament, but funds are found to provide for them in a
manner equally exempt from any interference or control. A very large
proportion of the taxation of the country is levied under permanent
statutes, and goes on without any reference to Parliament at all.
Formerly the House of Commons had a great jealousy of granting
permanent taxes, and they were strictly limited to the amount which
was necessary to meet the permanent charges. But this jealousy, like
many other of the sensitive feelings by which popular liberty used to be
protected, has disappeared. Taxes to a large amount, which used to
be annually voted, have been granted either in perpetuity or for long
terms of years. Not many years ago the House of Commons gave up,
in a permanent Act of Parliament, its annual control over the sugar
duties, to avoid the inconvenience of an annual discussion on their
nature and amount. In the year I have selected as an illustration, the
amount received from permanent taxation far exceeded the amount paid
out to meet permanent charges. If I am not mistaken, the income tax
and the tea duties are the only considerable branches of revenue the
continuance of which now depends upon the vote of the House of
Commons.
The effect of this is that there is a large portion of the revenue of
the United Kingdom placed entirely beyond the control of Parlia-
ment-it is levied by law and paid away by law. Of course there is a
sense in which it is under the control of Parliament, as the property and
liberty of every man in the country is under that control. A new Act of
Parliament might change the existing law, but until that law is changed
the receipts and payments go on wholly irrespective of existing Parlia-
ments. If the Queen had thought ﬁt not to convene a Parliament, in the
year 1867, or if the House of Commons had thought ﬁt not to grant the
supplies, thirty millions of money would have been paid into the Exche-
quer and paid out again, exactly as it was paid in and paid out.
Indeed a far larger sum would have been paid into the Exchequer,
although if the law was observed, it must have lain there for want of any
legal authority for paying it out.
Of the expenditure, to which Ireland is bound to contribute, a portion
is regulated by those permanent statutes, and provided for by perma-
nent taxation, which is levied at this moment in Ireland as well as Eng-
land.
3 2 Irish Federalism.
I am already transgressing the limits of a tract like this. It would far
exceed these limits to enter on an analysis of the permanent taxation
to which Ireland is subject for permanent charges upon the revenue. It
is enough to say that it appears to me that as to these charges the prin—
ciple upon which they ought to be dealt with is plain.
A careful examination should be made of their nature. Many of them,
as for instance the salaries of the English judges, belong properly to the
English expenditure; others, like the salaries of Irish judges, to Irish.
Of the national debt, a large proportion has been incurred for English pur-
poses, and with this Ireland cannot properly be charged. When the
account is so taken as to exhibit the permanent charge to which Ireland
is bound to contribute, the right course would be that this charge should
be provided for by some permanent tax, never to be remitted except by
the authority of the Imperial Parliament.
I would prefer that it should be provided for by Imperial taxes, levied
equitably through the United Kingdom. Taxes might be selected, the
pressure of which would be proportioned to the wealth of the country.
This would be the case with a property tax. It is not so with an income
tax. An income tax presses most unjustly upon a poor country. It is,
I believe, matter of demonstration that an income tax takes a far larger
proportion of the whole income of a poor country than it does of a rich
one.* A succession duty falls on a country proportionately to its wealth.
So does a probate and legacy duty. So, probably, does a stamp duty
upon deeds and upon bills of exchange. I would suggest that when the
permanent charge was ascertained which should fall in common on all
portions of the United Kingdom, this should be provided for by the
imposition, permanently, of some general Imperial taxes of this nature,
imposed by authority of the Imperial Parliament, and only to be remitted
by the same. '
These observations apply, of course, only to these permanent charges
which exist now by law, for which taxes are raised by law, and from
which Ireland has no power escape.
But assuming that we were able, as I think we might be, to select
* This may appear at ﬁrst a paradox, but I mean by the income of a country, all
the material products that are raised within it in each year. These constitute the fund
out of which the income of all classes in the country must come. If is evident that of
this income a large proportion pays income tax several times. A country gentleman
with a rental of ,6 3,000 a year, pays income tax on the whole ,1,‘ 3,000 ; but if he has
the misfortune to be in bad health and spends £200 or ,6 300 a year on his doctor, the
income tax is paid over again by the physician. If he has the misfortune to be involved
in litigation and spends the same sum on his professional advisers they also pay the
tax over again. From each of their hands we might trace the income into those of
others who pay it a third time. By the time the wealth, which is represented by the
country gentleman’s rental, comes to be really consumed, a great deal has paid
toll three or four times at least. The income tax in these cases is really a tax upon the
transfer of income. Almost all the income tax paid by those whom Adam Smith calls
unproductive labourers on income earned by their own exertions, is income tax paid a
second time. I cannot follow out the inquiry in a note like this ; but remembering
that the income tax is levied only on incomes over £100 a year, it is, I think, perfectly
capable of proof that of the entire fund of products actually raised in each year in
England and in Ireland, the aggregate of national income which must be distributed
among all-an income tax extracts a far larger proportion in Ireland than it does in
England.
Constitution and Powers of [mperial Parliament. 33
-,
modes of taxation which would fall on each part of the United King-
dom in proportion to its wealth, the very same modes of taxation might
be used to provide for that expenditure which the Imperial Parliament
would be authorized to raise by annual grant. The power of the Impe-
rial Parliament to raise taxes would thus be restricted to certain purposes,
but it would also be restricted to certain modes of taxation, and these
the modes which would ensure that the tax would be distributed through
every part of the United Kingdom in proportion to its ability to bear it.*
The Federal arrangement which I contemplate is one which would
preserve the Imperial Parliament in its present form. It would leave to
that Parliament all its present control over everything that affected the
Imperial Crown, its dominions, its colonies, and its dependencies—over
the foreign relations of the Empire, and all questions of peace and war.
It would leave it still the power of preventing any tampering with the
permanent taxation, which is the security for the payment of the interest
on the national debt, and the other charges on the revenue to which the
faith of the Crown and Parliament is pledged. It would leave it still the
power of providing by Imperial taxation for Imperial necessities, inclu-
ding an army and a navy such as it judged necessary for the safety of
the country, either in peace or war—-imposing only a guarantee in the
nature of the taxation that the levy should be one to which each mem-
ber of the United Kingdom should contribute in proportion to its ability
and its meansj'
I am far from supposing that in this sketch I have indicated all the
matters which on reﬂection and discussion it might be found advisable to
reserve to the Imperial Parliament. In America the criminal laws rela-
* In the Act incorporating the Canadian Dominion the reverse of this principle is
adopted. The Provincial Parliaments are prohibited from raising any revenue except
by direct taxation. This was done to prevent the possibility of separate tariffs, or even
the possible exclusion of the goods of one part of the Union from another. This is just
one of the points in which the contiguity to each other of their provinces makes their
case wholly different from that of England and Ireland. \Vhatever restriction might
be imposed on the Parliament of England and Ireland, as to custom regulations, ought
to be embodied in the Federal Constitution ; but, subject to this, there is no reason
why each country should not have full control over its own taxation, and full command
over its own trade.
‘I It is plainly of the essence of a Federal Union that either the constitution itself
or some central authority rnrrst regulate the whole amount of forces which may be
called for for common purposes, and the quota which is to be furnished by each mem-
ber. In the Germanic Confederation of 1815, this was determined by the Articles of
Confederation.
The next consideration is whether they should be in the form of a common army
raised by the central authority, or an army composed of ﬁxed contingents of each mem~
ber of the Confederation.
And, lastly, supposing that it is to be one central force, is the quota of expenses
falling on each member of the Confederation to be raised by taxation to be levied by
Itself, or as a part of some general taxation under the control of the central authority.
The latter is the system of the United States. \Ve cannot propose, with any chance
of success, a Federal Constitution for Ireland without leaving the Imperial Parliament
the same powers in this respect as that of Congress.
If we devise a tax, as I think we can, which will fall on each country in proportion
to Its resources, then each country would contribute to the expense of the Confedera-
tron exactly in proportion to the practical beneﬁts it derived from it. Imperial tax-
2]t3t1otn_might safely be limited to a property tax imposed equally in Ireland and Great
r1 am.
C
34 Irish Federalism.
ting to offences against the Union, and the regulation of the criminal pro—
cedure relating to their trial are vested in Congress and not in the
legislature of each state. In Canada, while each province regulates the
civil procedure of the courts, the procedure in criminal cases can only be
altered by alaw of the parliament of the Dominion. It would be easy to
suggest other matters in regard to which some reason might be urged for
leaving them to the Imperial Parliament. I have suggested those which
occur to me as sufficient.‘ I am sure that in such a Federal arrangement
the less interference the central authority has with local action the
better. But there would be no difﬁculty in arranging all questions of
this nature if two intelligent persons sat down together, one, an English~
man, representing the Imperial authority, with a sincere desire to con-
cede to an Irish Parliament everything that was necessary to‘ give it
complete independence in the management of Irish affairs 5 the other, an
Irishman, representing Ireland, with an equally sincere desire to give the
Imperial Parliament all powers that would be necessary for the safety
and stability of Imperial power.
CHAPTER IV.
coNsTITUTIoN AND POWERS or THE IRISH PARLIAMENT.
It is obvious that it would not be possible, even were it desirable, to
restore the constitution of the Irish Parliament as it existed before the
Union. The franchises of most of the close boroughs have long since
been numbered with the things that were. Their corporations or their
freeholders have long since ceased to exist. It would be difficult to trace
even the boundaries of many of the ancient boroughs 3 there might, I
believe, be one or two instances in which it would require some little
research to identify their site.
I would myself earnestly wish that the constitution of an Irish Parlia-
ment should be the act of the Irish people themselves. I would prefer
the plan of sending writs to every one of the old constituencies, leaving
it to the “ commonality ” ‘to elect the members by household suffrage in
every place in which the select body that had usurped the old rights had
disappeared. A House of Commons so elected would not be an
adequate representation of the people of Ireland, if representation is to
be judged by a distribution of members in proportion to population. It
would, after all, supply a very fair representation of all classes in the
country, and would, I believe, honestly and fairly enter on the task of
constructing a system of Irish representation upon a sounder and a
wider basis.
* I have heard it suggested that among the matters to be placed beyond the power
of our Irish Parliament should be the establishment of any religious ascendancy, or
any alteration of the Act which settled Irish property in the reign of Charles II.
A provision against establishing anyreligious ascendancyis to be foundin the American
Constitution. If the reservation of the points I have mentioned would calm even
unreasonable apprehensions, I believe few Irishmen would object to a provision that
no Act affecting any question of religious establishment, or the settlement of property
should be passed except with the sanction of the Imperial Parliament.
Constitution and Powers of the Irish Parliament. 3 5
Such a plan must probably be classed among the visionary projects of
constitutional action which the present generation is too wise to enter-
tain. The constitution of the new Irish Parliament must, I am afraid,
derive its form as well as its authority from an Act of the Imperial
Parliament. The general principles of its constitution it is not difficult to
suggest.
To constitute an Irish Parliament members of the House of Commons
should be chosen by an election perfectly distinct from that of represen-
tativés to the Imperial Parliament.
The Irish House of Commons ought to be numerous enough to
constitute a really popular assemblage.
Any one who will take up Thom’s Almanac will have no difﬁculty in
ﬁnding in Ireland abundant materials for the formation of constituencies
that could easily return such a body. The exact allocation of members
is, of course, a subject which it would be folly in suggestions of this kind
to determine. I can only say that if in addition to the county members,
members were returned from every town in Ireland having a population
of more than 3,000, every district in Ireland would be fairly and
adequately represented. In some few instances it might be desirable to
group together towns, so as to give a fair share of borough representation
to counties in which (such is the condition of Ireland) there are no
considerable towns. In others such a grouping might be advantageous
on other grounds. Districts in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, and
in some other parts of Ireland, should be formed into boroughs, and thus
with representatives from the Universities, and possibly from the Colleges
of Physicians and Surgeons, and some other bodies of that nature, we
could easily frame a constituency for a House of Commons fairly repre-
senting the Irish nation.
In presenting a plan of Federalism such as I hope and believe the
Irish nation will, ere long, present to the Imperial Parliament, it would
not be necessary, or I think advisable, to propose any change in the
existing franchise. The distribution of seats is an essential matter which
cannot be avoided, but it would be imprudent to mix up the question
of the franchise with that of the grant of the Federal Constitution.
Taking the existing franchise as the basis it would be easy to select the
towns which should be entitled to return members to the House of
Commons. This selection of the towns and the adjustment of boundaries
should be, in the ﬁrst instance, entrusted to a committee or commission
on which all political opinions were fairly represented. It would be easy
to name men who would enter on such a duty without any other wish or
thought than a determination fairly to apportion the representation. It
is a subject upon which Irishmen ought to accustom themselves to think,
although it is one upon which it would be absurd to anticipate the time
for practical action. I will only say that any one who will give a few
hours to study the question, and consider what must be, from the circum—
stances of the country, the constitution of the borough representation of
Ireland, will have no fear that in the Irish House of Commons the
intelligence and property of the country will be deprived of its just
inﬂuence and weight.
Assuming then that we had thus constituted a House of Commons
C2
36 [7/2'5/2 176617676} Zz'sm.
composed of not less than 250, and not more than 300 members, it
remains to inquire what should be the constitution of the House of
Lords. "
The Irish peerage numbers, in all its ranks, 187 members. But of
these a large number have not and never had any connexion with
Ireland. I have already adverted to the manner in which, before the
Union, an Irish peerage was frequently conferred. There are at least
ﬁfty Irish titles in which it is impossible to trace the most remote
connexion with Ireland or Irish affairs. ,
The holders of such peerages could of course never expect to take
their seats in an Irish House of Peers. They should of course be per-
mitted to retain their titles and their rank, but they should be excluded
from political power, either by a special enactment or by a law, which
would probably be sufﬁcient, that no person should claim a seat by virtue
of the grant of any Irish peerage which had not been followed up by his
ancestor sitting in the Irish House of Lords.
But even of the remaining peerages a large number are represented by
absentee proprietors. It would not be an unreasonable law which would ‘
prohibit any peer from taking his seat who had not been resident in
Ireland for a certain period before he did so.
We should of course restore to the Queen that old prerogative of
creating Irish peers of which by the Union the Sovereign was deprived.
It would be essential, considering the circumstances of Ireland, that no
objection could be offered to the granting to the Sovereign the power of
creating life peerages with the privilege of sitting in the House of Lords.
I am sure that we could thus form an Irish House of Peers in which the
resident nobility of Ireland would take their place in the council of the
nation——which would, as a deliberative assembly, maintain the fame and
character of the country-and in which the Irish aristocracy could learn,
as the English have done, to sympathize with, or, at all events, to yield
the enlightened and deliberate opinion of the country, while they exer-
cised the powers of control over rash legislation which it is the province
of a second chamber to possess.
WhenI state these views as to the mode of constituting an Irish
Parliament, it must be remembered that these details form no part of the
principles of a Federal Union. I can only state the plan which I would,
myself, be disposed to advocate and accept. I would be equally ready
to assent to any other proposal which would attain the same end by other
means—that end being the institution of a Parliament in Ireland-—in
which enlightened popular opinion would have a free and a full represen-
tation, and in which all orders in the state would, in peaceful and con—
stitutional relations, exercise their just and proper inﬂuence over the
course of national affairs.
It is, however, something to bring clearly before the minds of men, a
practical plan for constituting an Irish Parliament which involves nothing
revolutionary in its character, and from the practical working of which no
one who knows Ireland or the Irish people will apprehend anything
inconsistent with the order and well-being of the state.
To a Parliament constituted in this manner I am sure that all classes
of Irishmen might safely trust the protection of their liberties and rights.
Ireland might conﬁde to it her national destinies and hopes.
Powers of the [M's/z Parliament. 37
CHAPTER V.
POWERS OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT
THIS inquiry has, in a great measure, been disposed of in that which
treated of the powers to be conferred upon the Imperial Parliament.
The Irish Parliament consisting, be it always remembered, of the Queen,
Lords, and Commons of Ireland, would have supreme control in Ireland,
except in those matters which the Federal Constitution might specially
reserve to the Imperial Assembly.
If the proposals already made were adopted in their integrity, the
Federal Irish Parliament would have all the control over Irish affairs
which the old Irish Parliament possessed-with this difference only, that
Ireland would be subject to the taxation which it would be in the power
of the Imperial Parliament, for Imperial purposes, to propose.
Over all the rest of the revenue and resources of Ireland, the Irish
Parliament would have complete control—a control to be exercised under
that constitutional restriction which obliges all grants of public money to
be made only on the recommendation of the Crown. Every matter
relating to the internal administration of the country—our railways, our
post oﬁice, our public works, our courts of justice, our corporations, our
systems of education, our manufactures, and our commerce, would all be
left under the management of our domestic Parliament.
When I say under the control of our domestic Parliament, I mean in
such manner as the constitution points out. The Queen, through her
Viceroy, would still exercise all the prerogatives of sovereignty and
control, and direct all the departments of administration, of which the
constitution gives the management to the Crown. The House of
Commons would only interfere when the constitution admits of its
interference. Under such a constitution Ireland would enjoy that which
did not exist before the Union-—a government can'ied on by ministers
responsible to the Irish Parliament and answerable to that Parliament
for each and every of their acts.
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland would be, as he is now, appointed
under the Imperial Great Seal. Personally he would be responsible to
the Imperial Parliament; he would be liable to impeachment before
the Imperial House of Peers, but all his acts of Irish administration
would be done through Irish ministers responsible to the Irish Parlia-
ment. Those ministers would stand in the same relation to the
Parliament as the ministers in Canada or in the great Australian Colony
stand to the Colonial Parliament. Ireland would then for the ﬁrst time
in her history enjoy the beneﬁt of constitutional and parliamentary
government-that is, a government carried on by ministers of the
Crown, but ministers daily brought into contact with the representa-
tives of the people—-liable to be questioned in a popular assemblage for
each of their acts, and under the necessity of explaining and vindicating
their acts in an assembly representing the opinions and sentiments of
the country whose affairs they administer. Such a government Ireland
38 [risk Fea’emizkm.
certainly does not now possess. We never can possess it as long as an
assembly in which English sentiments are predominant is the only one
in which ministers can be questioned as to the management of Irish
affairs.
If any one is disposed to doubt the advantage to Ireland of a Federal
arrangement which would restore to us a native Parliament, even with
powers more limited than those I have suggested, I would ask of him
to contrast the mode in which any question of practical Irish adminis-
tration is now disposed of with that in which it would be if the depart-
ment to which it belonged were under the control of an Irish minister
responsible to an Irish Parliament, and exposed to its questionings and
its comments, exactly as an English minister is now subject to the
criticism of an English House of Commons. It needs, perhaps, a little
experience of the working of the system thoroughly to appreciate the
incapacity of an English House of Commons to exercise over the admin-
istration of Irish affairs the real constitutional control of the opinions of
the representatives of the people.
A great deal of government rests in those little things. English
government is kept in sympathy with the popular sentiment, not because
the House of Commons possesses the power of impeachment, or of
stopping the supplies-not even because it might pass a vote of censure
upon an unpopular official-but because every English minister goes
down from his oﬂice to an assembly in unison with the sentiments of
the English people, and in which popular feeling and popular sentiment
prevail. He knows that upon the smallest matter in which any number
of the people take an interest he is liable to be questioned and worried
and tormented if he runs adverse to popular feeling. In the adminis-
tration of Irish affairs there is nothing like this. I The last thing that is
thought of is the necessity of conciliating popular sentiment, or meeting
the opinion of any class of Irishmen. Our system of a united Parliament
supplies no Parliamentary means of keeping the Irish administration
either attentive to Irish interests or in harmony with Irish feeling.
Let me say, however, once for all, that the value of free parliamentary
institutions is not to be measured even by the amount of good govern-
ment which they may directly produce. Their highest and their noblest
function is to be found in their encouragement of public spirit, in their
training of the sentiments of independence, of self-reliance, and of
national pride, which are the only real preparations for good govern-
ment, and which insure it. Let us have a National Parliament, in
which Irishmen will learn to manage their own affairs-in which
national sentiment will ﬁnd its expression-and in which Irishmen,
when they differ, will be forced to discuss their differences with the
conciousness that it is only Ireland, their common country, that must
arbitrate between them. In the teachings of such a Parliament we
would learn the lessons of national dignity and mutual self-respect.
The very sense of national freedom would do for Ireland now what it
did for Ireland in the years that followed 1782f‘ what it did for the
* Lord Clare, in 1798, declared, speaking of Ireland between 1782 and the period
when he wrote :-
“ N o nation on the habitable globe advanced in cultivation, in commerce, in agri-
culture, in manufactures, so rapidly, in the same period.”_
Powers of Me Irish Parliament. 39
Italian republics in the middle ages; what it did for Belgium since
1831 ; what it has done in every age and in every clime for every
country that has been raised from a state of dependence to self-
government*-—it would stimulate all enterprise, nerve every industry,
and give impetus to every improvement. It would elevate every man
in the community, and, in giving him a pride in his country, it would
give him a new power to serve his country and himself. Give to Ireland
free Parliamentary institutions, and whatever be deﬁcient in our consti-
tution, a public opinion enlightened, and a public sentiment kindled by
these institutions, will soon learn to supply.
In legislation, of course, every measure should pass both Houses of
Parliament, and ﬁnally receive the royal assent, before it became law.
These requirements of the constitution would surely be a sufﬁcient
guarantee, if it were needed, against any attempt to do injustice to any
class of Irishmen. I should be very sorry to suppose that the Irish
House of Lords would ever set itself against the deliberate opinion of
the Irish nation. I do not believe it ever could. But in checking a
measure of injustice-if any one should ever unhappily pass the House
of Commons-I believe the veto of the Lords could never be overcome.
But these imaginations of democratic violence from an Irish House
of Commons are visionary in the extreme. There is no people on
earth less disposed to democracy than the Irish. The real danger of
democratic or revolutionary violence is far more with the English
people. The time may not be far distant when a separate Irish Par-
liament might be, in the best sense of the word, the Conservative
element in the British Confederation. Without entering on these
speculations, it is enough to say that it would most assuredly be able to
guard Ireland from revolutionary perils, which, I believe in my con~
science, nothing but an Irish Parliament can very long avert.
I ought not to close this chapter without adverting to a question
which is naturally suggested by the view we have taken of the position
of Ireland before the Union. I have observed that no Act of the Irish
Parliament could then become law until the royal assent had been
signiﬁed, under the great seal of Great Britain. If our position is to be
the same, this same assent might still be required under the Imperial
great seal. If any one sees any security in retaining such a provision,
I, for myself, would have no objection to its being retained.
I am not sure that one of the effects of a Federal Constitution would
not be, in many respects, to strengthen the royal prerogatives, or rather,
to call some of these prerogatives out of the abeyance in which the
system of governing by party has placed them. For myself, I would
not regret this. I am not sure that public liberty has gained anything
by the establishment of a mode of government in which the powers of
the Crown have been too often held in trust, ﬁrst for the great houses
of the revolution, and then for the party that could by any means gain
* All history conﬁrms, by innumerable examples, the truth of a sentence which
might be written at the head of any chapter which recorded the story of any land to
“111011 the right of self-government has been, after an interval, restored.
The narrative of all might be written in the words—“ Mirum quam cito libertate
recuperata respublica crevit.”
40 [risk Federalism.
a majority in the House of Commons. I have reverence enough for
the old forms, as well as the old principles, of the constitution, to lament
the remarkable change which has taken place in the public documents
of late years. In many of our ofﬁcial despatches, even those on foreign
affairs, we miss the reference to the Sovereign’s commands which once
was the invariable formula. In many of them the name of the minister
occupies the place which was once ﬁlled by that of the King, as if the
ﬁction of our living under a monarchy might as well be quietly ignored.
It is in England, and not in Ireland, that the elements which threaten
danger to our monarchical institutions are to be found.

CHAPTER VI.
A GENERAL VIEW or A FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
IN the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to draw, it may be with
too much particularity, the outline of a Federal arrangement such as, I
believe, might fairly be accepted both by the Irish and English nations.
It may be well to bring together into one view the leading features of
that plan.
The Imperial Parliament would meet exactly as it does now. Its
business would be conﬁned to the regulation of Indian and Colonial
affairs, to voting the men for the army and navy, and the supplies for
the Imperial expenditure, and to interference in foreign affairs, where
such interference would be called for, and generally to such supervision
of Imperial concerns as circumstances might make necessary.
In ordinary times the business of the Imperial Parliament would be
light. A session of two months in the year, or two sessions of one
month each, would, in general, be sufﬁcient to enable it to “ despatch,”
as the ofﬁcial phrase is, the business which it had to discharge.
But it must be said that there would be one great advantage over the
present system. All that business would receive full and. deliberate
attention. The Indian budget would not be postponed to a hurried
statement on one of the last days of the session, to be discussed in an
assembly of 20 or 30 members. Colonial affairs would receive an
attention for which at present they very often plead in vain.
In England——if the plan I propose were adopted in its integrity-the
English members and the English peers would assemble in a separate
Parliament for the transaction of all purely English affairs. Whether
they would still form one Parliament with the Scotch members is a
question with which Ireland would have nothing to do. If Scotland, like
Ireland, wished for a separate Parliament, an arrangement might easily
be made by which the sittings of the English and the Imperial Parliament
might be held at intervals so timed as to summon the Scotch and Irish
representatives to take part in the discussions of Imperial affairs. It has
been already observed that in the union both with Scotland and Ireland
the English Parliament was left untouched. Under a Federal Constitu-
tion the English Parliament would still be the Imperial Parliament, when
it called Irish and Scotch representatives to its aid. Very possibly a
General View of a Federal Consz‘iz‘nz‘ion. 41
system might be framed under which, consistently with the Constitution,
the English Parliament might be summoned for English purposes in an
English session, and in an Imperial session for Imperial purposes, at
which latter the Irish and Scotch representatives would be present.
These are details which have more to do with the facilities of the trans-
action of English business than with the principles of our Federal Union.
'T hat which is of importance is that Ireland would send, as we do now,
IO 5 representatives to vote in an Imperial Parliament on all questions
of Imperial concern, and in return we would submit, as we do now, to
be taxed by that Imperial Parliament, but only for certain deﬁnite
purposes and in a certain deﬁnite manner.
At home in Ireland we would have our own Parliament controlling all
the affairs of our internal administration. We would have the Sovereign,
as now, represented by a Viceroy. We would have an Irish ministry
responsible to and controlled by an Irish Parliament. We would have
an Irish House of Peers, consisting of our resident Irish nobility, with
such additions of men, distinguished in any ﬁeld of intellectual achieve-
ment, as the Sovereign might think ﬁt to associate with our hereditary
nobility in the Upper House-and we would have an Irish House of
Commons elected under a popular suffrage by the counties and towns of
Ireland, with the addition of the representatives of the few learned bodies
who could fairly claim the right of sending members to an Irish Parlia-
ment.
It need not follow-it would .not follow-that the persons returned to
the Imperial Parliament should also have seats in the Irish House of
Commons. They would be chosen at a separate election. Even in the
constituencies which had the privilege of returning members to both
Parliaments they might very probably be elected by different electors.
It is said, I know, that under such a system the best of our nobility and
gentry would still be drawn off to an Imperial Parliament. With the
limited functions assigned to an Imperial Parliament, this could not be
the case to any injurious extent. The great attraction for Irishmen
would be the Parliament in which Irish rights and interests were ﬁnally
disposed of. Great questions no doubt would arise in the Imperial
Parliament in which the voice of Ireland must be heard both in the
cabinet and the senate, but Ireland would be rich enough in ability to
spare men to protect her interests, assert her opinions, and maintain her
reputation in the great council to whose decision all questions of Imperial
interest would be left.
42 Iris/i Federalism.
CHAPTER VII.
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Failure of z‘lze Union So/zeme.
I HAVE said that I do not intend this tract as an argument against our
present system of Union. I have assumed that the great majority of the
Irish nation wish that system to be changed. I have occupied myself,
not in proving that wish to be reasonable, but in showing how it can be
safely and practically carried out. There are, however, considerations
which lie on the surface of this question to which I venture earnestly to
invite the attention of all persons interested in its solution.
I may ask of any rational man, Englishman or Irishman, or Scotchman,
whether it be not true that the system of government established at the
Union has failed? It is useless in answering this question to tell me of
great measures of wisdom and liberality passed by the Imperial Parlia-
ment. Every government is to be tested by its results ,' and the system
of rule which at the end of seventy years has not succeeded in giving
peace or contentment or prosperty to a country has failed. In attaching
Ireland to England-the great and primary object of the Union—it has
miserably broken down. It is enough to condemn it to say that it has
not yet made us one country-one in interest and feeling. None of the
Imperial objects sought by it have been gained. I have already referred
to the remarkable statement of Mr. Pitt, that he urged the union of the
countries, because the French attempts upon Ireland had proved Ireland
to be the weak point of the empire in time of war. I have said that if
England were drawn or driven into war to-morrow, Ireland would offer
incomparably more temptations to an invader than it did in 1798.
There is now in 1870 far less real union and sympathy between the two
countries than there was in 1790. There is in the minds of a large
portion of our people a hatred of English government to an extent and of
an intensity which never existed before. In all the Imperial purposes
of the Union it is impossible to conceive a more complete disappointment
of every expectation that was entertained. Instead of uniting Ireland in
bonds of common interest and feeling with England, it has more than
ever alienated the Irish people. Under the Union there has grown up
all over the world a race of Irish emigrants hostile to England, and
forming, it might almost be said, one vast conspiracy-a conspiracy of
thought and feeling, if not of action-against her power. Ireland is
every year becoming more and more the weakness and the reproach of
the Crown of Great Britain.
In all Irish purposes the failure is, if possible, still more complete. 'The
social history of Ireland since the Union is a record of poverty and
suffering such as could not be supplied by the annals of any other country
upon earth. Hundreds of thousands of Irishmen have literally died of
starvation in their own land. Millions have been ruthlessly driven from
their native soil. The wealth and the prosperity which were promised
General Considerations. 4
J
A
us have never reached our shores. At the end of seventy years of union
with the richest country in Europe, Ireland is still the poorest and the
most wretched. I know of no more melancholy or humiliating record
than that contained in the annals of Irish legislation since the Union.
It is even more humiliating than the gloomy roll of persecuting laws
which ﬁll up the seventy years which followed the ﬁnal conquest of
Catholic Ireland at the Boyne-because it records good intentions
frustrated, designs apparently conceived in a spirit of wisdom and liber-
ality mysteriously bafﬂed. It recalls to mind the gloomy grandeur of
Spenser’s words* that sound almost like prophecy of which all is not yet
fulﬁlled. The best of our political history presents nothing but a series
of blunders and failures. Measures of conciliation have invariably failed
to conciliate. Measures of coercion have not yet succeeded in crushing
disaffection. They have never had more than a temporary and partial
effort in repressing crime. A lavish system of corruption has succeeded
in demoralizing a portion of Irish society, but it has failed in purchasing
for our rulers any real inﬂuence or support. The most ignoble system
of police despotism in Europe has irritated and fretted and lowered the
spirit of our people, but it has not given us that peace for which some
persons would endure a well-administered police tyranny. Our statute
book is a melancholy record of arms acts! insurrection acts! acts for
suspending the habeas corpus! for suppressing party processions! for
prohibiting public meetings ! as if brute force was the one expedient of
Irish Government, and the highest object of Irish Statemanship was to.
crush down the spirit of the nation. \
At the end of seventy years an administration the most liberal in pro-
fession that England has ever seen, is ruling Ireland by enactments more
arbitrary than any previous ministry ever ventured to propose. A
general disarmament of the nation is the only plan that can be devised
for keeping the public peace. An Arms Act is indeed a permanent part
of our happy Irish constitution, but the legislation of the last session has
imported new contrivances into the well-stocked repertory of instruments
of Irish oppression; or rather it has gone to distant ages and foreign
countries to revive and to import and combine the rudest and most re-
ﬁned modes of trampling down liberty. Toward the close of the 19th
century, and under the aegis of England’s glorious Constitution, we are
ringing the curfew bell of the conquest, and imposing for a murder the
blood-money of the Saxon kings. At the same time we are borrowing
from French despotism the “ warning of the press”-—while we have
given to the English Viceroy the power, at his pleasure, of destroying
any newspaper he thinks ﬁtq‘ This is liberal government in Ireland!
*‘ “ Marry so there have been divers good plottes devised, and wise councels cast
already about reformation of that realme; but they say, it is the fatall destiny of that
land, that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good wil prosper or take
good effect, which, whether it proceed from the very genius of the soyle, or inﬂuences
of the starres, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the times of her refor-
mation, or that Hee preserveth her in this unquiet state still, for some secret scourge
which shall by her come unto England, it is hard to be knowne, but yet much to be
feared.”-- View of the State of [1 elanol, p. I.
1' \Ve must do justice to English legislation. There is a formidable check upon
the exercise of this power. If the Lord Lieutenant wrongfully suppresses a news<
j s
l
I
l
l
I
i
l
44 Irish Federalism. 1'
jTo justify these measures by saying they are necessary to maintain
fpublic order is only to pass the deepest condemnation on the system of
government which has brought the country to such a pass."‘
paper, its proprietor can recover damages —BUT THEY ARE TO BE PAID OUT OF TI-IE
PUBLIC FUNDS !! It is, at all events, the ﬁrst time in English legislation in which
the principle has been laid down that Parliament is to indemnify the officer of the
executive for violating the law.
* It were easy to multiply from the speeches of every liberal statesman since the
Union—I mean liberal statesmen when in opposition-—the most scathing denuncia-
tions of the system of meeting Irish discontent by penal laws. A speech of- Mr.
Brougham’s lies accidentally before me, from which I cannot help extracting some
sentences not inappropriate to the present time :—
“ Ireland with a territory of immense extent, with a soil of almost unrivalled
fertility, with a climate more genial than our own, with an immense population pf
strong-built hardy labourers—men suited alike to ﬁll up the ranks of our armies 1n
war, or for employment at home in the works of agriculture or manufacture-Ireland
with all these blessings, which Providence has so profusely showered into her lap,
has been under our stewardship for the last 120 years; but our solicitude for her has
appeared only in these hours of danger, when we apprehend the possibility of her join-
ing our enemies, or when, having no enemy abroad to contend with, she raised her
standard, perhaps, in despair, and we tremble for our own existence ./ It cannot be denied
that the sole object of England has been to render Ireland a safe neighhonr. We have
been stewards over her for this long period of time. I repeat that we shall one day
have to give an account of our stewardship—-a black account it will be, but it must be
forthcoming. We are driving six millions of people to despair, to madness! * * *
The greatest mockery of all—the most intolerable insult-the course of peculiar exas-
peration—-against which I chieﬂy caution the House, is the undertaking to cure the
distress under which she labours, by anything in the shape of new penal enactments.
IT IS IN THESE ENACTMENTS ALONE THAT WE HAVE EVER SHOWN OUR LIBER-
ALITY TO IRELAND ! She has received penal laws from the hands of England, almost
as plentifully as she has received blessings from the hands of Providence ! What have
these laws done? Checked her turbulence, but not stiffled it. The grievance remain-
ing perpetually, the complaint can only be postponed. We may load her with chains,
but in doing so we shall not better her condition. By coercion we may goad her on
to fury ; but by coercion we shall never lzreah her spirit. She will rise up and break
the fetters we impose, and arm herself for deadly violence with the fragments.”--Lord
Brongham’s Speeches, vol. iv., p. 45.
I venture to add to this a passage, not from any spoken speech, but from a deliberate
essay of Lord Brougham’s, which would almost appear as if it had been written to
applly 30 our new form of penal government, which is now the settled constitution of
Ire an :,—-~
“ It is remarkable how exactly the occasional deviations from its fundamental prini
ciples in a free constitution, and the temporary introduction of arbitrary power, liken
it to the worst despotisms, and produce the very abuses for which those bad systems
are so renowned. To fancy that, because the suspension of any important right is but
temporary, or because the uncontrolled authority conferred is to be exercised in a free
state, the same abuses will not follow which are familiar to the inhabitants of eastern
nations, argues a great ignorance of human nature, and a disregard of the facts which
history presents to us.”
“ There is so little foundation for the arguments of those who dwell upon the harm-
lessness of vesting large powers for temporary purposes in the government of free
states, that on the contrary such powers are more dangerous and more likely to be
abused than the habitual authority of the sovereign in despotic governments. This
arises partly from the tendency of extraordinary privileges to be exercised in their full
extent and with a violence proportioned to their novelty, and partly from the greater
conﬁdence and fearlessness of men who derive such powers from the public, and feel
that they have an unquestionable title to them. But there is no argument more power-
ful against ever granting extraordinary powers than the tendency of such grants to he re-
peated, and the tendency of the powers bestowed to heeome part of the constitution. The
General Considerations. 45
And all the while there is-—-I cannot say in spite of, but rather
cherished and fostered by, all these measures of repression, deep in the
hearts of the people themselves--a sullen but ﬁery hatred of English.
rule, which most assuredly only needs a favourable opportunity to as-
sume the form of a determination to get rid of it.
Disgrace and Danger to England in the Present State of Things.
I need scarcely say no Irishman ought to be satisﬁed with the present
condition of affairs- Oz/ght any Englishman? I am quite sure that the
interests of England are more concerned than those of Ireland in a
peaceful and equitable adjustment of the relations between the countries.
To Ireland the day of deliverance, sooner or later, must come. The
system of government which is now crushing down Ireland cannot last.
It may be; after years of suffering and struggle-it may be with the
sacriﬁce of many a patriot life-it may be with more endurance in
dungeons, more victims on the scaffold—it may be when all the present
generation are sleeping in their graves, but the emancipation of Ireland
is certain one day or other to come. For England the question is a very
different one. If Irish rights be won by a revolution the days of British
power are numbered. I know the scorn and contempt with which
men will receive or pretend to receive this language. But he is not a
wise minister for England who deﬁes the hostility of the Irish race. He
is no wise statesman who dreams that an empire is safe which holds in
its bosom one-third of its people as its foes. This is a subject upon
which, for obvious reasons I do not care to dwell. But the man, no
matter in what seat of authority he sits, is a short-sighted fool who makes
light of the danger with which Irish disaﬁfection menaces English power.
N 0 one can tell the light which even a few days may throw upon the
future course of European events. Even while I write victories may be
won which may enable peaceful negotiations to terminate the terrible
war in which two great and civilized nations are butchering each other-
or new and unlooked for complications may point to a struggle in which
every European nation must take part. What even a day may bring
forth I know not 5 but one thing I do know, that if a war, such as is at
least possible, does arise, and if England does go into that war with the
guilt of Ireland’s oppression hanging like a millstone round her neck,
and the curse of Irish disaffection weakening her arm, the boldest may
well look with trembling to the effect on her greatness of that struggle
It is, at least, within the limits of possibility that we may come out of
that war, with Ireland a member of the great Western Republic, or an in-
dependent state with its nationality guaranteed by the joint protection, it
may be, of America and Russia, or of all the European Powers.
This language must not be misunderstood. I know that the best and
wisest of Irish Nationalists believe with me that Ireland ought, by all
possible means, to maintain her connexion with England. I believe
people hecome accustomed to them; the rulers become ﬁend of them, and believe that the
aﬂairs of the state cannot he administered rclithout them.”
The history of Ireland within the last ﬁve years conﬁrms abundantly the wisdom of
this passage. I say it with some knowledge-and I say it solemnly, I am persuaded
that more wrong, and misery, and suffering, were inﬂicted upon innocent persons in
Irish prisons during the periods of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act than were
lnﬂicted in Paris in any twenty years within the walls of the Bastile-
46 Irish Federalism;
England than she would be either as a member of the American Con~
ifederation, or as an independent nation under the protection of any
‘ European power. I am quite sure that if England will aid our efforts
by giving us the right of self-government in our own affairs, those who
think thus have power and inﬂuence enough to control the passions of
that section of our people whom long misgovernment has driven to
believe in a separation from England as the only remedy for Irish
wrong. The concession of a domestic Parliament would make the cry
for separation powerless, even if it were ever raised. In a few years the
wish would be forgotten. Under an Irish Government we would in seven
years become more identiﬁed with England than we have in seven
centuries of oppression. As the terrible barriers of separation which
are raised by the exercise of tyranny and the sense of wrong disap-
peared, all the inﬂuences of union which are to be found in our near
neighbourhood—our common language-our common institutions-our
thousand ties of kindred, of interest, and of trade, would have their fair
and full operation in making us not in name but in reality, in interest,
and affection, one united state.
But while I thus point to the fact that all the powerful elements of
Irish opinion are on the side of the English connexion-—while I say,
unhesitatingly, that with the concession of an Irish Parliament we may
safely trust to these inﬂuences to maintain the connexion, and more
than the connexion, the friendship, of the two countries—I would not
speak the whole truth if I did not add, that if Ireland is to pass through
troublous times without any concession to her nationality, then, indeed,
events may arise which no man can attempt to control. Among the
warmest friends of British connexion there are many, very many, who
believe that their ﬁrst and highest allegiance is due to their native land
——who would follow the banner of their country wherever it might lead,
and who would prefer almost any future for that country to the prospect
Of the eternal continuance of things as they are.
Every right-minded man will earnestly hope and pray that means
may yet be found of averting from the human race the evils which must
follow a general war among nations. But if this hope be realized this
will not diminish the importance, although it may remove the pressure,
of the Irish question. Wars will come again. “ England’s difficulty”
will be, one day or other, “ Ireland’s opportunity.” Spenser’s mysterious
foreboding must always appear, even in the prosperous and joyous days
of England, as the handwriting on the wall. When the time of trial
actually comes, Ireland will be the danger—at all times it will be the
weakness-of England. While the Irish question is unsettled England
is insecure. If the Irish nation be willing now to accept a settlement
of that question, in the form of a Federal Union such as is suggested in
these pages, the English minister would be, indeed, unwise who would
omit the opportunity of effecting it.
Ej’ect of the Union on England.
If I have written strongly, and it may be boldly, on the subject of
the danger that attends the continuance of Irish disaffection, I have
certainly done so in no spirit of menace. Still more remote from my
/that Ireland would be happier and better under a Federal Union with
i
Failure of the Union Scheme. 47
thoughts is anything like hostility to England. I know that it is
ungracious to speak of danger from Ireland, even if it be in the language
of warning. But accidental circumstances gave me an insight into the
extent and intensity-perhaps I might add into the resources——of Irish
disaffection, and with the strong convictions I have formed, I could not
honestly conceal the belief I entertain. I turn with pleasure to a View
of the question on which I can write in a manner more congenial to my
own feelings, and, I admit at once, more calculated to make way with
the English people.
The best argument that I can address to any high-minded Englishman
in favour of the concession of a native Parliament to Ireland, is that
Irish affairs would be better managed by an Irish Parliament, and that
under such a Parliament Ireland would be happier and more contented
than she is now. I may, however, without wounding any of his national
susceptibility, use the argument that the present condition of Ireland is
before the civilized world a reproach to the English nation. When in
an evil hour England took upon herself the Parliamentary government
of Ireland, she took upon herself a task which she could not possibly
perform. A popular representative assembly at one with the people is
the essential necessity of Parliamentary government. The Irish people
can never ﬁnd such an assembly in a representative assembly which is
really and essentially an English—which at all events is certainly not
an Irish—one. The failure was inherent in the very nature of the
attempt; but of that failure England has all the responsibility, and
incurs all the odium and reproach.
But Englishmen ought, I think, seriously to reﬂect whether the
attempt to combine English and Irish representation in one body has
not impaired the eﬂficiency of Parliament as the instrument for the
management of English affairs. The multiplicity of business which is
now thrown upon Parliament is more than it can do. English bills of
great moment have been often postponed for Irish questions in which
party interests were supposed to be involved. No one can doubt that
English business would be far better managed if it were left to a House
of Commons composed exclusively of English members, and giving
their whole attention to that business alone.
But this is not all. Very many questions of purely English interests
are really decided, not by a reference to English considerations, but
with reference to that which is somewhat contemptuously termed “the
Irish vote.” It is not only that in many instances measures have been
carried by the votes of the Irish members against an English majority.
In some of the most important and decisive periods of recent English
history, ministers have been kept for years in oﬂice by the support of
an Irish party against the wish of the English people. In 1835 the
Lichﬁeld House compact displaced the ministry of Sir Robert Peel,
and handed over the guidance of English affairs to that of Lord Mel~
bourne. Who can now calculate the extent to which this inﬂuenced
the whole course and policy of the present reign P From 1837 to 1841
that same Melbourne ministry was retained in Ofﬁce against the wish of
the English people by the support of Mr. O’Connell. In r85r, and
again in 1852, the Whig ministry were displaced by the votes of Irish
48 Irish Federalism.
members, whose only object was to have revenge upon the writer of the
Durham letter. In 1852 the ministry of Lord Derby was displaced by
a compact between the opposition and the Irish party, who were pledged
to support tenant-right. In all these cases the continuance or fall of
the ministry depended upon the arrangement they or their opponents
were able to make for Irish support, and that support was given or with-
held, not with any view to English interests or English questions, but
with reference to the bargain which was made as to Irish affairs. N 0
system of government could be worse, either for England or Ireland,
than one which makes the determination of English policy dependent
on these separate and questionable intrigues. At best the purchase of
the support of Irish members to any particular English policy, not by
reference to its own merits, but by a bargain as to Irish policy, is in its
very nature destructive of the independence and freedom of Parliament.
Compacts of this nature are questionable transactions, even when con-
ducted solely with reference to the public interests involved, or supposed
to be involved, on both sides. We do not need experience to tell us
how very easily and naturally they may be degraded into trafﬁcking in
which very little is thought of beyond stipulations for patronage and
place.
To anyone who studies the history of English politics since the
Union, it will be evident that since the Reform Bill the illegitimate
action of the Irish element in the House of Commons has exercised a
very decisive inﬂuence over their course. Before the Reform Bill it
was not felt, partly because governments were then stronger, and did
not depend so much as they do now upon the management of sections
in the House-partly because, in the days of nomination boroughs,
there was not the line of demarcation between Irish members and
English members which there is now. Sir Robert Peel was not less of
an English statesman because he ﬁrst took his seat for the Irish borough
of Cashel ; neither was Lord john Russell because he was nominated
by the Duke of Devonshire for Bandon. The governing classes in
whom power was vested before the Reform Bill were nearly identical in
the two countries. They had common interests, and sympathies, and
feelings. With the extension of popular power created by the Reform '
Bill--and even more than this, with the new questions raised, and the
new passions stirred by the impulse given to popular ambition——a wholly
new order of things came. An entirely different assembly took the
place of the old House of Commons. The arrangements of the Union
were subjected to a new test. It is easily intelligible that a system
which might have worked very well in blending together two sets of
members chosen by unreformed constituencies, would altogether break
down when it was applied to another and a wholly different state of
things. The moment the Irish vote appeared as a distinct power in the
House, detached from, and uninterested in, the questions of English
policy, that moment the system of intrigue and bargains, and compacts,
became the inevitable result—and from that moment the House of
Commons was incapable of fulﬁlling, even for England, the true func-
tions of the representation of the people.
This is a view of the question which it is, of course, impossible, in the
General C onsiderations. 49
limits of this tract, to follow out 3 but. I would venture to suggest to any
Englishman who will thoroughly study the records of Parliamentary
history since 1832, that he will come to the conclusion that the mischiefs
which have followed the attempt to combine the two nations into one
representative system have been felt in the degration and deterioration
of English Government and the English Parliament itself.
The Mode of doing Irish Business in the United Parliament.
As I have adverted to the mode in which English business is very
often jostled and crushed out of the way of Irish party debates, I must
brieﬂy glance at the mode in which the ordinary Irish business is done.
Writing on an Irish question, I may, perhaps, adopt that very expres-
sive form of statement which English prejudice calls an Irish “Bull,” and
if I am asked how Irish business is done, answer the question by saying
that a great dealof it is not done at all. It were easyto give along catalogue
of measures of practical utility—-about the necessity of which there is no
controversy-which every year are certainly promised the next session,
and as to which we year after year await, with a patience like Job’s, the
fulﬁlment of the annual promise, which to all appearance will require the
years of Methuselah to see fulﬁlled. Ireland has been waiting for exactly
twenty-eight years for a measure embodying a very moderate but a very
necessary reform in the Grand jury Laws, recommended in 1842 by a
Royal Commission of which the late Baron Greene was the chief. Seven
years ago a Bill was actually introduced to carry out the recommendation
of a Royal Commission to assimilate the practice of our Law Courts to
that of England. The proposal commanded the universal assent of the
profession, but, in the whole seven years, time has not been found to pass
it. Our jury system is left in a state of hopeless confusion, because a
day cannot be given for its discussion. Our law of debtor and creditor
continues in its old condition, because each session an Irish Secretary or
an Irish Law Officer is “reluctantly obliged” to defer its amendment
until the next. I could ﬁll pages with a list of similar postponements.
If indeed the Bill for assimilating our Common Law Courts to the English
still lies in the state of promise, a similar measure for the Courts of
Equity has happily been passed. Fortunately for the suitors in these
Courts this Bill contained a provision for the creation of a new judicial
place, and each party when in office vigorously pressed it on. There
was a little delay in the struggle to make it fall to the lot of one party
rather than the other. The accident of a member going into the wrong
lobby gave the prize to the Tories. The Equity Bill has passed.
Unfortunately, most unfortunately for hundreds of suitors, the Law Bill
did not contain a single clause providing a sinecure judgeship, or even
one of those economical provisions which are supposed to save money
by providing for the retirement of a number of vigorous officials upon their
full pay. The public interests only were concerned in its passing. It
is therefore still one of “ the measures of next session.” N 0 great
question of policy attracts attention until it can be used as the instru-
ment of English party. N 0 time can be found for any practical measure
unless it embodies a crotchet or a job. *
D
50 Irish Federalisn‘z.
But any one who knows the way in which the purely Irish business
which is done is transacted, will scarcely regret that so much of it is left
undone. At the close of every session in the small hours of the morning
a number of small Irish Bills are introduced. No statement is made of
their objects or their purposes, and they generallypass through their stages
when the gray dawn of the morning is struggling with the Bude—light
through- the stained glass windows of the"! Commons’ Hall. The
appearance of these Bills is invariably preceded by a ﬂight of a great
number of the ofﬁcials, of those “ boards” which prey upon every
Irish interest. These oﬂicials hover, like birds of evil omen, round the
lobbies, or perch under the galleries, waiting anxiously for the small
hours of the morning when each of them watches over his little crotchet
or his little job. These Bills are introduced under various titles and
pretexts. Occasionally it may be “ a Bill to give further powers to
Grand juries in Ireland ; ” upon examination it is found to be a Bill to
saddle Irish counties with the cost of some of the numerous blunders of
the Board of Works. At other times it is “ a Bill to explain and amend
an Act explaining and amending the Fishery Laws,” and the gist and
substance of it is found to be in a clause destroying the private property
of some Irish gentleman which even the despotic powers of the Fishery
Commissioners could not reach. Again, it may be “ a Bill to continue
certain expiring statutes,” beginning with a few Turnpike Acts, and
hiding in the corner of one of its schedules one of those coercive
measures with regard to which ministers had yielded the previous session
a provision that it should be enacted only for one year. I am not
drawing this sketch from imagination but from experience.
By bills passed in this manner, many of them unquestioned, powers
have been clandestinely given which have frittered away every free prin-
ciple of law, and subjected the administration of all Irish local affairs
to the most arbitrary and vexatious interference, sometimesof the Lord
Lieutenant, very frequently of some of “the boards,” in very many
instances of the police. No vigilance of any, even the most suspicious
Irish member, can detect all the artiﬁces which lie hid under all the pro-
tean forms which these little bills assume. There is not one of them
which does not contain some extension of the power of some centralizing
board, some attack upon the principle of local government, some new
power to the police, or some violation of public freedom. If an Irish
member is content to wait in London to the very last night of the Session,
and to wait each morning until the House breaks up,he is still powerless to
defeat or even to expose. The bill is brought in at an hour when no
one remains in the House except those of the ministers who have the
strongest constitution, and their devoted adherents, whom their whipper-
in has inﬂuence enough to detain in the library or smoking-room, to
make a House. If two or three Irish mefiibers endeavour to stop this
legislation, they are assured, by the Chief Secretary, that the bill has been
carefully considered by the Board of Works or the Poor Law Board, or
whatever be the department that happens to have the care of that
particular job. He will probably make an appeal to “his honorable
friend” to allow this bill to pass, as he can assure him his apprehensions
are unfounded, and it is only intended to remove an inconvenience
General Considerations. 5 I
which has arisen from an unintentional mistake in a former statute,__and
it willfacilitate the closing of the Session, on an early day, if he is allowed
to take a stage of the measure that night. Half a dozen English
members wake up from their slumbers on the seat behind the Treasury
bench, and cry “hear” with a grave deliberation intended to show their
full appreciation of the real character of the bill. If an unfortunate Irish
member attempts to show that real character, he is but wasting his words.
He has not even the poor satisfaction of being reported. Long before
that hour the reporters have ceased reporting from the exigencies of the
press arrangements of the morning papers. Even if they had not it is
not a subject in which there is any interest, and the reporters put down
their pen with an observation that “ it is only an Irish row.” If he
speaks, he speaks in vain. If he attempts to divide, a number of
apparitions glide along the corridors from the library, or emerge from the
subterraneous recesses of the smoking-room. As they pass the whipper-
in near the door these apparitions generally ask him into what lobby they
are to go, and interests, it may be important Irish interests, are disposed
of by the votes of those whose only notion of the measure was that the
whipper-in had told them “they were Ayes.”
The result is that Irish members shrink from the ungenial and thank-
less, as well as useless office of scrutinizing these bills, except when
something very ﬂagrant is attempted and accidentally detected, the small
Irish bills of the end of the session pass without challenge or remark.
Yet in these small bills a great deal of the practical legislation of
Ireland consists. In their provisions a great deal of the practical govern-
ment of Ireland is arranged. In the aggregate of many small details,
there has been established by this midnight legislation in a series of
encroachments upon the liberties of Ireland and independence of every
Irish interest, a system of oﬂicial tyranny, which has changed the whole
form and character of our Government.
In one of the measures passed in this way the control of the Irish
prisons was transferred to the Lord Lieutenant from the Court of Queen’s
Bench. It was passed as a mere measure of administrative convenience.
Its effect has been to make the Lord Lieutenant the absolute master of
every Irish prison——-to destroy all the old constitutional safeguards againt
the ill-treatment of prisoners—and last, not least, to convert the old
punishment of imprisonment for political misdemeanour into a penal
servitude more severe than the penalties with which many felonies were
visited in the olden time. A proposal to change the punishment which
fell upon O’Connell into a penal servitude, in which he would have been
compelled to wear the prison dress, to live on gaol diet, to be kept in
solitary conﬁnement, and to sweep out the gaol yards, would probably
have provoked an outburst of indignation even from Irish members.
Yet this very change in the punishment of political offences has been
made-unnoticed, and unknown--by one of these “ small bills” which
pass at the end of every session, as a matter of course.
If I wanted to convince any man of the necessity of a new tribunal
for Irish legislation upon practical matters, I would place him in a
position in which he would be compelled to watch for the last month of
two or three sessions the passage through Parliament of those “small
D2
52
Irish Federalism.
-.._.---<.___
bills,” which really control a large portion of the life of the Irish people.
Tried by this test, and even on the low ground of the working ﬁtness of
the machinery of legislation, the Union arrangement must be pronounced,
as to Irish practical business legislation, a miserable break down.*
CHAPTER VIII.
A FEW LAST WORDS.
I HAVE now completed, I fear at too great length and with too much
detail, the task I have proposed to myself, of sketching the outline of a
Federal Constitution such as I believe would be of advantage both to
England and Ireland ,to adopt. I earnestly appeal to Englishmen to
consider if there be anything in that proposal which it is inconsistent with
the honour or the welfare of their country to accept. No thoughtful
Englishman can be satisﬁed with the present state of the relations
between the two countries. Every right-minded Englishman must feel
himself reproached by the condition to which, under English government,
Ireland is reduced. Every far-seeing Englishman, no matter what con-
ﬁdence he has in the resources and greatness of his country, must know
that while Ireland is discontented Ireland must be a source, at all events,
of weakness to the British Crown. All attempts that have been hitherto
made to solve the Irish difﬁculty have failed. Is it not time to try the
experiment of letting us endeavour to manage it ourselves P Why should
not the self-government which has made Canada contented and loyal be
equally successful in Ireland in attaining the same results ? Why should
not the same free system upon which Englishmen pride themselves in
their own country produce in Ireland the fruits of order, and happiness,
and peace? These are questions which Englishmen must ask themselves.
Of one thing they may be assured, that no measure ever can or will
satisfy the Irish nation while they are deprived of the right of managing
their own affairs. Englishmen never would rest content if their laws
were made and their government administered by another nation.
England would never rest or be at peace if the country were governed by
Ireland, by Scotland, or by France.
To my own countrymen I submit this proposal as that which offers us
at all events the best prospect of obtaining that self-government without
which Ireland can never be at peace. I have endeavoured to place
before them, as fully as these pages would admit, the relative advantages
of the position which Ireland would occupy under a Federal Constitution,
and under the system which was in existence before the Union was
passed. I have not attempted to conceal my own belief that under
* I have not in this chapter adverted to one great and crying evil which attends our
present system-I mean the costly and most unsatisfactory mode in which the private
bill business of Ireland is transacted. Every private bill, such as a gas bill for one of
our cities, involves a long and most expensive inquiry at Westminster. before a tribunal
entirely unacquainted with Irish affairs. This evil is capable of being at least partially
remedied by the establishment of a special tribunal for such purposes, following up the
principle already applied to the trial of election petitions. I have very little douht that
it will he so, and we will he moched hy having this called a concession of home government.
A Few Last Words. 53
Federalism Ireland would make a much nearer approach to independence
than she would if we could simply restore the Constitution of 1782.
But this is not the only consideration that must inﬂuence our judgment.
In all political questions we must take into account the practicability of
any scheme, and the difﬁculties that may attend it. By a very large
number, both of Englishmen and Irishmen, a simple Repeal of the Union
is regarded as involving, as an almost necessary consequence, the separa-
tion of the two countries. Whether this conviction be well founded or
not, it is one which has taken a deep hold upon the minds of many in
both countries, who would be willing to see established in Ireland any
system of selfrgovernment which would not be inconsistent with the
unity of the Empire. Against any proposal for a mere Repeal of the
Act of Union, unaccompanied by any provision to secure the future unity
of the empire, England would struggle to the very last. For such a
proposal we would not obtain the support of many of the most inﬂuential
classes of our own countrymen. I am not one of those who say that
therefore it could never be carried. But when? and how? Any man
who reﬂects calmly on these things will, I believe, come to the conclusion
that-even if abstractedly he would prefer a simple return to the Con-
stitution of r782-——if we could obtain our own Parliament, with such
powers as I propose, retaining still our right to be represented in the
Imperial Parliament-it would be unwise indeed to refuse this merely
for the remote chances of simple Repeal, with all the delays, the uncer-
tainties, and the perils which must intervene before that project can be
realized. But, in truth, it is an inaccuracy to say that a Federal Con-
stitution is not “Repeal.” If we establish a Federal Constitution we
must, of course, repeal the Act of Union. In repealing it we abrogate
all the provisions which gave Englishmen the practical power of legis-
lating on Irish affairs. We restore the independence and the constitution
of 1782. We protect and we perfect them by a Federal Union, which
gives Ireland a voice in the Imperial administration, and secures unity
and power to that administration itself. We adopt a measure which
ought to have followed as a necessary consequence of the Constitution
established by Grattan and the Volunteers.
No man can say that any political arrangement will endure for ever.
In the changes of dynasties and nations-in the unceasing progress of
human affairs—-the best formed combinations are broken, and institutions
that seem the most durable crumble away under the mouldering hand
of time, and the action of the mighty current in which human thoughts
and passions are forever rushing on. No one could guarantee an
eternal Union of the two countries, even upon the basis of mutual
interest and mutual equality which a Federal Constitution would recog-
nize. Among the unseen eventualities of the far off future, the hour of
separation might come. But if it did come it would come for Ireland
not in the form of a revolution in which the whole fabric of society
would be shaken. It would come for Ireland guided and controlled by
deliberative assemblies in which the manhood and the wisdom of the
country would take counsel, in which the voice of the nation would be
heard, and by which, in any hour of danger, our country would be
guided in the paths of national dignity, and, therefore, in those of
moderation and order.
54 Irish Federalism.
It may be that some Irislnnen of extreme opinions may be dissatisﬁed
with the proposed plan because it does not suggest any radical changes
in the constitution. Complaints have been made even of the Federal
resolutions because they recognized the continuance of an hereditary
House of Lords. But surely a very little thought will satisfy any one
that if we are to unite in making the demand for self-government it must
be by meeting on the common ground of taking things as they are. If
each person were to insist on inserting in our plans any particular views
of his own, there is an end of unity in our struggle. We engage in a
dispute about our constitution, not in a demand for a nation’s rights.
If I felt myself at liberty to propose changes there are several which I
would recommend, some in what would be termed a Conservative
direction, others in that which would very reasonably be termed Demo-
cratic. I would wish, for instance, to see some provision in which
some seats should be at the disposal of the ministers of the Crown. I
would earnestly desire to see a restoration of the old constitutional
rights of our citizens in great towns, by the means of guilds of trades of
every man who followed a trade or a handicraft should be enrolled and
have a vote. I would have wished to see the reform of the representa-
tion of the people both of England and Ireland effected upon principles
like these. But it has not been so done. I must take matters as they
are. All that a demand for self-government means is this, that we
should transfer the constitution as it is to Ireland. The advocates of
progress lose nothing by this. They will be exactly in the same position
as they are now. The friends of the conservation of existing institutions
are not damaged. They will have all the means of maintaining them
that they have now. If the demands of our national life require the
expansion or change of our institutions, these things will be effected by
the growth of opinion, and the spread of intelligence. We cannot make
our institutions, any more than our Federal Constitution, binding on all
time.
I admit at once that if there be a part of the plan in which there is a
temptation to propose new constitutional provisions it is in relation to
the upper legislative chamber. It is not without doubt and reﬂection
that I have proposed the plan which these pages contain. But I am
perfectly and entirely persuaded that even in respect of this it would be
unwise to propose any new principle. I do not regard the exclusion of
non-resident peers and the institution of life peerages as innovations
constituting any departure from this rule. They are not inconsistent
with the principles of an hereditary chamber, and both are necessities
springing practically from the position in which Ireland and the Irish
peerage are placed.
Even if these reasons did not exist, I cannot help thinking that we
would do unwisely if we were to deprive our Irish Parliament of the
dignity which, in the present state of feeling, the presence of an heredi-
tary peerage confers. An Irish upper chamber framed upon any of the
Colonial models, would be always looked down upon as an assembly
inferior to the English House of Peers. By giving to the Queen the
power of conferring life peerages we could combine with the dignity of
an hereditary chamber, the energy and the popularity of an elective one.
A Few Last Words. . 55
'
But these very considerations suggest to me an appeal to that class of
our countrymen who have hitherto stood aloof from all movements
intended to promote the cause of Irish nationality. I believe it is of
the utmost importance to the cause of this country that they should now
take their position with the masses of their countrymen in organizing, as
well as demanding, self-government for Ireland. If the movement for
Federalism is to go forward, as I hope and believe it is, the form of the
Irish Constitution must, within certain limits, be moulded by the views
and opinions of those who take the lead in carrying movements to a
successful issue. If self-government is won by the people, without the
upper classes-no man will expect that the new arrangements will be
made with any particular regard to the privileges of those who will be
looked upon as deserting their country. If the upper classes, on the
other hand, ‘take in that movement the place which every true-hearted
Irishman is willing to concede to them, they will have their voice and
inﬂuence in moulding these details upon which the practical working of
of any constitution must depend. That they should take no part in the
coming victory of the Irish nation would be an injury to the cause of
Ireland-but it would be a far deeper and heavier calamity to them-
selves.
But surely they, of all men, are the most interested in winning self-
government for Ireland. In our own parliament they would have the
weight and inﬂuence which property and station and education are sure
to command from the natural instincts of the Irish people. In the
English Parliament they have none. If they have any fears of injustice
being done them in an Irish Parliament, I have already pointed to these
constitutional safeguards which are surely suﬂicient to prevent it. But
if any security or guarantee can be devised that will give them further
assurance, I venture to think that no Irishman will be found taking part
in the national movement who will object to any that does not com~
promise the honour of his country.
Of all the fears that ever frightened men from their propriety, the
most absurd is that which apprehends danger to Protestant liberty from
an Irish Parliament. It is more than absurd, it is unworthy of men
strong enough with their own right arms to protect themselves against
oppression. If ever there is an attempt to lower Irish Protestants from
their rightful position, it will not be from an Irish Parliament that the
attack upon them will come.
But with reference to these vague fears of danger to men’s religion
and property, especially the latter, let me ask those of the upper classes
who entertain them, are they satisﬁed that their present position is one
of security P Can they really believe that any English minister will ever
burden himself with protecting them the moment that protection becomes
inconvenient to English interests, or even to those of party P It is not
in our present system of government that any reliable or abiding protec-
tion for any Irish right or interest is to be found.
But we live in times when men must look forward to the possibility of
events which a few years ago were unthought of. It is impossible to
look at the condition of England and of the world without gloomy fore-
bodings, to which I, for one, do not wish to give deﬁnite form or shape.
56 ' [risk Federalism.
Who can tell the destiny that may, before many years pass by, await
England herself? Will any one venture to predict that her greatness
- will never fall-fall by the aggression of foreign power, or, a worse fate
still, be broken up by an outbreak of the inﬁdelity and socialism that are
spreading throughout her own land? The time may come when everyr
Irishman would wish that we had in Ireland a Parliament and a Govern-
ment which an English revolution could not touch, to guide the people
and control the fortunes of our country. I am unwilling to pursue this
train of thought, yet it is one that forces itself on every one who can
read the signs of the times. These thoughts are suggested by a view of
our position which concerns all classes of Irishmen. All I say is that
events may occur in which it might be vital for the highest interests of
Irishmen that Ireland should have a constitution by which, when need
arose, her separate nationality and her institutions might survive un-
harmed a shock that may yet shatter the fabric of England’s government
and power. It is not in the hour of peril and confusion that we might
be able to give our national existence a constitution and a form.
But turning from thoughts like these-thoughts that may be pro-
phecies, or may be but wild speculations-whatever is to be the destiny
of England in the future, it is the interest as it is the duty of the upper
classes of Irish society to place themselves in the front of a national
government for self-government. It is the opportunity of a reconcilia-
tion with the people which they may never have again. In the union
of all classes of Irishmen we would have the best security for the peace
and order of the country. It is in the well-being and contentment of
the people at large, that the only real safety for the privilages of rank or
for the rights of property is to be found.
If a real, an earnest, and a united effort were now made to realize for
Ireland self-government such as I have proposed, I believe the eyes of
all Irishmen throughout the world would turn to it with hope. There
are Irishmen-earnest and true-hearted Ir1shmen—who have been ready
to stake all that is clear to them upon the desperate effort to obtain the
redress of their country’s grievance by force. There are thousands and
tens of thousands of Irishmen who are ready, if the opportunity offered,
to follow their example. But I am sure that the most determined and
earnest of them would be ready to give up, or at all events suspend,
these thoughts, and watch with patience, hope, and expectation, the re-
sult of any movement which would hold out the prospect of a real and
honest effort peacefully to obtain self-government for Ireland, and with
self-government the blessings of freedom, prosperity, and peace.
Watching—watching anxiously and carefully—-indications of things
like these, I have believed that by an effort to obtain self-government
under a Federal Union, we might not only in the end attain self-govern-
ment but in the end ﬁt ourselves for it. To bring together in one com-
bined national effort the separated classes of Ireland, is in itself to re-
construct the Irish nation 3 it is to reform the broken and scattered
elements of Irish society. We may win back to constitutional action
the energies, and the virtues, and the heroism, that would be wasted and
wrecked in a wild attempt at insurrection——we may repair, wherever they
are broken, the links of the religious union that bound the Catholic
T he Destiny of Ireland. 5 7
clergy and people together-we may reeoncile the quarrels which have
severed the owners and the occupiers of our soil-we may end those
sacrilegious feuds which have kindled the most unholy passions in the
name of holy things. All this, I have believed, might be done by plac~
ing before all Irishmen an object in which all may unite-by raising its
image and its form above all the feuds and distractions that divide us-
while in giving to our people the union of a common purpose, we might
impart to them with it the dignity and grandeur of a united nation.
I believed a year ago that all this could be done in a movement such
as these pages are written to promote. I believe so still with an un-
wavering faith, if men can be found among us who can devote their time
and energies to carry out these great and glorious objects, and who will
pursue them with singleness of heart, and with the wisdom which
sincerity inspires. It is because I know and feel that such men can be
found-they have been found-that with a good heart and courage I
offer in these pages the little contribution of aid which I can bring to
help them in a great and noble work.

CHAPTER IX.
THE DESTINY OF IRELAND.
I AM not content that this tract should be given to the public without
the addition of a few pages which I know will, in the eyes of many, im-
press upon my views and opinions a visionary character. But without
them this publication would convey a very imperfect and, therefore, in
this instance an untrue representation of my sentiments and thoughts.
It may appear to some that I take a low view of Ireland’s future,
because I _am willing to ask for her a place, in some respects it may be,
a subordinate one, in a.confederation of the British Isles. This is not
so. I have a faith, it may be a fanatical, but certainly an enthusiastic
one, in a future for Ireland that will recall the glories of her ancient
grandeur, and obliterate the traces of the centuries of miseries and
humiliation which have intervened between that grandeur and our time.
I believe in that which is popularly called the destiny of nations—-that
is, I believe that nations are appointed to fulﬁl certain purposes in the
great progress of the human race :—-
“There is a Providence doth shape their ends,
Rough hew them as they will.”
I do no envy the man who can study history without feeling this-who
can imagine that he is reading the records of detached human actions;
or of human actions following each other in the natural and ordinary
sequence of cause and effect, and who does not see that over all the
passions and feeling of men there presides an over-ruling power that
moulds and fashions the life of nations to some particular purpose which
5 8 [risk Fedem Zz'sm.
they are to carry out, it may be in the far off future of the story of the
human race.
All those who accept the Jewish and Christian revelations, must believe
in numerous instances of this. But it needs no revelation to teach any
careful student of history that often in the history of mankind events
have marvellously and mysterious prepared the way for things which
manifestly appear to have been determined beforehand by a power that
guides the course of human affairs. Old traditions have often kept alive,
in the memories of a people, stories of their origin and their bygone
days, whieh, in after times, have shaped themselves into facts inﬂuencing
their course. More frequently prophecies, the source of which is lost in
the darkness of remote antiquity, have found their veriﬁcation in events
occurring long after the prediction had become a household word. The
greatness of Rome was foretold when its dominion extended but a few
miles, and to this hour the traveller who looks upon the T arpeian Rock
can recall the tradition of more than 2,000 years, which told of the per-
petuity of the capital-
“ Capitoli immobile saxum. ”
as he remembers that from that rock the ensign of empire, spiritual and
temporal, has not yet departed. Men may say that these are traditions
which bring with them their own power, and prophecies which work out
their own fulﬁlment. I am not ashamed to say that I prefer the higher
and, as I believe, the truer faith, which recognizes, in the popular tradi-
tions and popular legends, those instincts of mankind which often discern
afar off the things that are to come.
There is no people on earth about whose origin so many strange tradi-
tions gather, as those which surround the cradle of the Irish race.
The strangest of all is that which associates them with the Jewish exodus
from Egypt, and traces back the wandering of the ﬁrst settlers in Ireland
to the shores of the Red Sea. These strories are not altogeter mythical.
Like most historical traditions of the olden time, legend mingles fable
with the truth. Most unquestionably the traditions that have come down
to us of the ancient greatness of our country are not altogether untrue.
There were days when a civilized Ireland was supplied with her slaves
from England and from Gaul. It was her slave trade that brought her
great apostle to her shores. In her Christian era the stories of her learning
and sanctity rest upon the clearest proof. It is no myth that the College
of Lismore, before the coming of the English, had 1,200 students coming
from all parts of Europe to learn in its halls. In every part of Europe
there are monasteries, the foundation of which was owing to the zeal of
of Irish monks, and which still retain the memorial of their Irish origin
and name. In our own land marvellous architectural monuments remain
the record of remote times. Of some of them the origin, like that of
the Pyraminds of Egypt or the Cyclopean Ruins of Etruria, is lost in the
gloom of distant ages. But all of them tell us of a time long past, when
Ireland was the home of a great and mighty people-many of them of a
time when it was inhabited by an eminently Christian nation. There is
scarcely one of the traditions of antiquity which have come down to us,
whether it be one of our early origin or our ancient greatness--the
Tne Desz'z'ny of Ireland. 59
legend of the shores of the Red Sea—the story of the Round Towers--
or the tale of the Ruined Abbey--which is not inseparably interwoven
with some hope or prophecy of the return of the good old days-of the
time when Ireland shall be once more a great and happy land.*
It would make these pages a romance to mention even a few of the
legends and the traditions in which Irish memory and Irish imagination
link together the future and the past. I am not ashamed to say that I
believe that these things are the speaking of the instincts of the nation-
the presentments of the future lying deep in the national heart. I am not
foolish enough to say that because we have these legends and traditions
it therefore follows that the presentments to which they give utterance
must necessarily be true. Yet I believe that the hopes which have been
enshrined for long years in the hearts of nations, have been, in the
world’s history, realized far oftener than they have been disappointed. If
we turn to the great leading facts of Ireland’s history they are as strange
as the legends of its fable or the predictions of its traditionary lore.
Like those legends and predictions, they point to the belief that Ireland
is reserved for some destiny as yet unfulﬁlled.1‘
The increase of the Irish race and its diffusion through all the regions
of the globe to which enterprize is carrying colonization are among the
most marvellous facts In the history of man. By how many remorseless
wars, by how many merciless slaughters have their oppressors sought to
exterminate that race? Too often English rule in Ireland has been one
bloody and pitiless attempt to drive them from the earth. Even Spenser,
“ the sweetest poet of his time,” can scarcely forbear exulting in the desola-
tion of Munster by the wars of Elizabeth and James 1.1 The war of the
* I may mention the familiar instance of the story of St. Brendan’s Isle. It reminds
me that in the Middle Ages these Irish legends had an ascendancy in Europe. No
legend acquired so universal a belief as the story of the \Vestward voyage of St.
Brendan, and the discovery of his enchanted isle. There is no reason to doubt that
the legend was based on an historic fact. It seems almost certain that the adventur-
ous Irish Abbot performed the voyage over the Atlantic many centuriesbefore Columbus,
and anchored in some of the rivers of the Western Continent. But in the then state
of knowledge and navigation the story was converted into the legend of “St. Brendan’s
Enchanted Isle.” But that legend took so ﬁrm a hold that even in modern times a
treaty by which the islands of the Atlantic were ceded to Portugal, excepted from the
cession the Island of St. Brendan when it should be discovered. The legend is now
associated with a strange tradition that as Irishmen were the ﬁrst to discover America,
it is ﬁtting that America should be the home of the exiled Irish—but as St. Brendan
prought back his crew, so Irishmen are one day to return across the ocean to their own
and l’
1' It is strange how universal is the testimony borne to the general prevalence of
this belief- Nine-tenths of Irishmen believe it. It is taught in many an ancient
ballad-it has come down in many of the stories of the olden time. It is found
embalmed in prophecies and legends which have been preserved in Continental countries
from the days of the Middle Ages. Even those who devote themselves to the study
of the Scriptural Prophecies have, with wonderful unanimity, fancied that they disco-
vered grounds for the belief that Ireland never having been subject to Imperial Rome,
is to escape miseries which will fall on the other nations of Europe. I believe that in
these common and general impressions, unaccountable as they often are, there is the
evidence of truth. History tells us that such general beliefs have almost always proved
true.
I The end will ( Iassure me) be very short, and much sooner than can be in so
great a trouble, as it seemeth hoped for, although there should none of them fall by the
the sword, nor be slaine by the souldier, yet thus being kept from maunrance, and
their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint they quickly consume
6.0 fan's/z Federalism.
Great Rebellion made Ireland almost a desert. The destroying sword
of Cromwell came to glean what the war and the pestilence had left.
Persecution trampled down the Irish people-all policy and all power
combined to crush them out of their native land. Misery and poverty
seemed to leave them without the means of bringing up their little chil-
dren to perpetuate their race. Every few years the periodical visitation
of the Irish fever-it had its own character-—devastated their dwellings.
Yet, like the Israelites in the land of Egypt, they multiplied and in-
creased. In our own day they have been driven in thousands and hun-
dreds of thousands from their homes. Evictions and famine have swept
the land with scourges far more terrible than that of war. Yet the Irish
people are still numerous and great-and the race which long and savage
wars have given to the sword-—the race which in the days of Spenser
was represented by the gaunt spectres of famine creeping from the glens
-—the race whom the sword of Cromwell spared not—the race whom
the famine of our own day swept down to the pit-the race whom the
the evictions of our own dayhad well nigh driven from their old land-that
race has survived wars, and pestilences, and famines, and oppressions, and
exterminations. The Irish are still the strongest in their own land-while
millions of Irishmen, scattered over the globe, are handed as one man
in love of their old country, and in remembrance of her wrongs !
But even this is not all. This people, “scattered and peeled” as
they are, have preserved their nationality in all the lands into which
they have been driven. Like the chosen people of God, they are
among the nations but not of them. Wherever the Irish are, they are
separate and distinct. They associate with, but they are not mingled
with the communities among which they move. Every where, in every
clime and land, even among their nearest neighbours, among those
whose language they speak and whose habits they acquire, their
nationality is separate and distinct.
In all their miseries and in all their oppressions they have kept
virtues and qualities that fit them for a higher and a nobler condition
than any they have ﬁlled for the last 700 years. Where are the
affections of home and family stronger or more beautiful than in this
down-trodden Irish land? Where is there more love or tenderness
than round the poor Irishman’s domestic hearth? Where is the hand
of charity so freely extended to the poor? Where is the stranger so
themselves and devoure one another. The proof thereof, I saw sufﬁciently exampled in
the late warres of Mounster ; for notwithstanding that the same was amost rich and plenti-
ful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they should have been
able to stand long, yet ere one year and a halfe they were brought to such wretchedness
as that any stoney heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods
and glynnes they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legges could not bear-e
them, they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their
graves ; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could ﬁnd them, yea, and
one another soon after, insornuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out
of their graves ; and if they found a plot of water cresses or sham-rocks, there they
ﬂocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue there withall ; so that in
a short space there were none almost left ; and most populous and plentiful countrey
suddainely left voyde of man and beast ; yet sure in all that warre, there perished not
many by the sword, but all by the extremities of famine, which they themselves had
wrought.”—— Vzew of the Condition qf Ireland.
T he Destiny of faelana’. 61
welcome to the share of the scanty meal? Where is the marriage tie
more sacred? Where is female virtue more honoured? Where is there
the same sense of religion that makes the pious prayer the household
word of the father, the mother, and the child? In what other country
will you ﬁnd, in the humblest homestead, a piety that has no ostenta-
tion, and a charity that knows nothing of show, give to the poorest of
the peasantry a simple courtesy and grace which riches cannot pur-
chase, and education has often not imparted to their prosperous and
well-to-do visitors from another land.
And surely even those who do not kneel at their altars may yet
marvel with awe and admiration at the supernatural ﬁdelity with_which
the Irish people have clung to their ancient faith. All inducements of
temporal advantages have failed to win them from that faith. All the
blandishments of wealth-all the seductions of power-all the inﬂuence
of rank and station, and superior education—have never shaken the
faith of the Irish people. In persecution they have been true to it. In
the severer trials of poverty and depression they have never bartered it
away. Excluded from privilege-deprived of the rights of freedom—
driven from the education the most valued, the Irish Catholic has con-
tinued Catholic, when by a c‘onformity to the dominant faith he could
have purchased admission to them all. The devotion of the Irish
people to their religion stands out alone in the history of mankind as a
ronument of ﬁdelity which nothing could shake-of energy which
nothing could subdue. It is something to which the annals of nations
can raise no parallel. Records of individual heroism there are many in
all ages and in every clime. Martyrs in all times and countries have
left us the example of their constancy and their faith; but history
records nothing like the ﬁdelity and devotion with which in Ireland a
whole people adhered to their religious belief. Even now when perse-
cution has passed away, and the love which persecution kindles might
have waxed cold, the gorgeous churches with which the free-will offerings
of a poor people are literally studding the land, supply a proof of
national religious devotion and self-sacrifice‘ such as few nations on the
earth could supply. _
The more these things are thought of the more will strange
reﬂections rush upon the mind. I do nobbeiievejhat it is without a
purpose that the God of nationshas-thus preserved and multiplied the
Irish race-“chat their/‘nationality has thus been kept separate and
CliStinCt- 1 (10 not believe that great and noble qualities like those of
Our people ar ever to ﬁnd any higher employment than they have
now. I. e observation might apply to many other things than those
WhMffI have enumerated. There {is not an element necessary to make
5 great nation which Ireland does not possess——which was not abun-
dantly proved and developed in the short interval of our independence.
The Providence that bestowed upon Ireland these great qualities must
surely intend that one day or other they would ﬁnd their work to do.
But is it altogether a vain imagination to believe that even in her
sorrows and her sufferings Ireland may have been mysteriously, kept
and prepared for some high purpose which in God’s good time she is to
fulﬁl? If persecution has its sharp and sore trials, it trains a people to
62 [me Federalism.
ﬁdelity and endurance. The poverty of a country may save it from
many of the evils which attend on luxury and wealth. If we have not
had in Ireland the manufactures of England, we have escaped the
fearful demoralization which some of those manufactures have brought
with them to the masses of the people they employed. If we have not
accumulated the great capital of England, our mercantile community
have not been degraded and depraved by the gigantic and remorseless
swindles by which ﬁnancial agents have destroyed the once high
character of English trade. Above all, we have not a population out-
growing the means of religious instruction, and living in a state of
heathenism. It would be utterly impossible in Ireland for incidents to
occur like those which we are assured by parliamentary papers to be
common “in the black country,” where grown up men and women
knew nothing of Jesus Christ. In England there are many publications
advocating inﬁdel opinions, and enjoying a large circulation-in Ireland
there is not one. Ireland is essentially a religious country, and men of
all creeds shrink from the scepticism which is spreading rapidly through
English society. I say it in deep sorrow, wealth and luxury have brought
to all classes in England contaminations and abominations from which
Ireland may rejoice that her poverty has kept her free.
These things, and many things like these, suggest irresistibly to my
mind the belief that Ireland is kept for some great purpose to be ful-
ﬁlled, it may be, many a long year hence. The Providence that has
watched over the Irish people has designed and is ﬁtting them for some
high and noble end. I know how easy it is for the scorner to point in
mockery of such hopes to Ireland, torn, bleeding, and distracted as she
is now. I know all the reproaches with which she may be reproached.
I do not conceal from myself the vices with which a false and anti-,
national system of government has corrupted the sentiment and
enervated the spirit of too many of her upper classes. I do not
extenuate the faults from which no enslaved people were ever free. I
know the power of the inﬂuences which weaken, and lower, and divide
us. I have felt, and gauged, and mourned over all the discourage-
ments which have shaken and marred the faith of many who were
disposed to believe as I do. But I know also that there are in the
Irish nation virtues, andI‘errergy. and spirit enough to rise above all
these. I know that we have qualitiesas a nation which only need self-
government, with its duties and its resporgibilitiqs, to bring them into
great and glorious action, before which all those thino' rthat lower, and
divide, and reproach us, will vanish away. b\
It is in this sense I say that I am persuaded that Irelan‘ has her
destiny—some good purpose, for which, to use the words of Spenmlgr
country is “reserved.”
It would grieve me to think with Spenser, that “the Almighty hath
reserved her for some secret scourge which by her shall come unto
England.” I rather look back to the traditions of the past-:to the days
when Ireland was “ the land of saints ”—when her missionaries carried
learning and Christianity to the continent of Europe, and young men
travelled from distant countries to learn religion and literature in her
monasteries and her schools.
The Destiny of Ireland. 6 3
May we .not believe that the other alternative to which Spenser looked
will be realized, “that the Almighty God hath at last appointed the
times of her reformation ”-——of the reconstruction of her ancient greatness,
and that with the passing away for ever of her “ unquiet state,”* she may
prove not the scourge but the strength and blessing of her sister land.
returning to that sister good for evil. Most assuredly, in Ireland we
possess the elements of a state which might exercise a good and bene-
ﬁcial inﬂuence, wherever that inﬂuence could extend ; and if ever the time
comes when the evil inﬂuence which unhappily exist in England should
prevail in her social and political system over the virtues which unques—
tionably belong to a large portion of her people, it would be well for
England herself that she had near her, and allied to her, a legislature
and a nation which those corrupting inﬂuences had never.reached.
I know how easy it is to throw out the vulgar sneer which points to
the religious dissensions of Irishmen as a source of disunion and quarrel
among them suﬂicient ever to prevent us presenting the spectacle of an
harmonious and united state.
Those religious dissensions have been fostered, and are still fostered,
by our English rulers for the beneﬁt of English rule. With the abolition
of English domination they will pass away. It was England which
forced the reformed faith upon the Irish for the purposes of her own
dominion, just as for her own purposes she had forced upon Ireland the
requirements of the Bull of Pope Adrian IV. It was England that
made the Protestants of Ireland her garrison, upholding them in return
in an ascendency which made the political position of Protestantism
odious, not because it was Protestant, but because it was anti-Irish. I
believe there is no country on earth in which there is less of hatred of
others on religious grounds than that which exists in Ireland. I apply
the observation chieﬂy to Roman Catholic‘ Ireland. The long struggle
for their own freedom—-a struggle in which they appealed to the great
principles of civil and religious liberty, the lessons in these principles
which were made immortal in the eloquence of Grattan and of Curran-
which were branded on the Irish soul in the burning words of O’Connell,'t
* Let no person reproach me with the assumption I make, that with the concession
of self-government her unquietness would cease. I have perfect conﬁdence in the
tranquillizing powers of a free constitution. Who can forget the splended imagery in
which Burke has embodied a great truth '.—“ Peace, order, and civilization followed
in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the English Constitution had arisen in
their hearts, all was harmony within and with out-
“ ‘ Simul alba nautis
Stella refulsit,
Deﬂuit saxis agitatus humor:
Concidunt venti, fugiuntque nubes :
Et minax (quod sic voluere) ponto
Unda recumbit.’ ”-—
Speteh on Conciliation with America.
1' Let me say it with melancholy reverence for his memory, Protestant Ireland has
never, in this respect, done justice to this great Irishman. N 0 man ever lived more
opposed to religious intolerance-no man would more strenuously have opposed any
sectarian ascendancy, or any attempt at political dictation by any spiritual power. N o
misrepresentation of his character could be more unjust than that which would describe
lnm as the slave of prejudice or bigotry, or the servile adherent of ecclesiastical rule.
64 Irish Federalism.
have impressed upon the Catholic people of Ireland a spirit of liberality
and toleration in which they will bear comparision with their co-religionists
in any European country. If ﬁery hatreds ever range themselves under
the banner of religious difference, they are hatreds not of any faith or
creed, but of the ascendancy with which the people believe themselves
to have been trampled down.
In no country in the world when once the idea of religious ascendany‘
is exterminated, has the intermingling of Protestants and Catholics ever
marred the vigour or the unity of a nation. It is strange, indeed, that
those countries who show most union and energy are those in which
diversity of religious faith prevails. History records nothing like the
power and the energy with which Germany has moulded together her
populations professing as they do different creeds. King William, in his
North German arm, is leading, at least, as many Catholic as Protestant
soldiers to the ﬁeld. In the American Republic, and in that of Switzer-
land, there is a similar division of religious faith-so there is in Belgium.
In France there is a numerous Protestant population 3 and so little does
religious prejudice prevail, that a Protestant prime minister of France
enjoyed in our time the longest tenure of power. Similar results have
followed—indeed, they precededwthe establishment of free constitutions
in Austria and Hungary. In Saxony a Catholic sovereign reigns in the
hearts of his Protestant people. It is only when a religious ascendancy
is attempted that religious differences become the source of national
weakness and national dissensions. It is political intrigue that degrades
religion into strife.
So far from believing the differences of religion which exist in Ireland
to be any hindrance to our discharging the highest functions of a nation,
I am persuaded that even in our very dissensions there has been a
training which will give Ireland a power which no nation of one creed
could possess. Ireland-Presbyterian, Episcopal, and Catholic-will
attract to her sympathies, which anation composed exclusively of one deno-
mination never could command. The very strength of each class will
prohibit and drive away the thoughts of the domination of any other.
The lesson which has been taught in the overthrow of the Protestant
establishment will not be lost on any section of the Irish nation. The
presence of another section of Christians will be equally a check upon
the negligence and the intolerance of each church ; and in the necessity
imposed on us of mutually respecting the opinions of each other Ireland
will learn the great lesson of that toleration, without observing which no
nation can ever be really great. -
Even in our religious differences—in the fact that we have within our
borders three great Christian communities, each strongin its intellect, in the
social position of its members, and in its numbers, I see apreparation
for the part which it is the destiny of Ireland to take in the history of the
worldﬂand an earnest that no narrow or illiberal prejudices will disqualify
her from ﬁlling it.

Irish F edera lisrn. 6 5
I need scarcely say that the views expressed'in this chapter are very
remotely, if at all, involved in the discussion of the question of a Federal
Constitution for Ireland. They prove nothing but the perfect faith I
myself have in the ﬁtness of self-government, in union with England, to
do full justice to our national life. Men may reject those views as
altogether visionary, and yet yield to the force of the practical con-
siderations which establish the necessity of domestic government for
Ireland. I am conscious, indeed, that to many the words I have written
on this subject will appear only to record the visions of a dreamer. Yet
to those who have accustomed themselves to study thoughtfully the signs
of the tendencies which irresistibly control human affairs I do not fear
to submit them as the words of sobemess and truth.
The time may be far distant when they can be judged by the practical
test of actual events. That time may not come until the writer of them
is long forgotten in the dust. He whose hopes and thoughts for his
country could be limited to the narrow span of his own life would not be
worthy to hope or think for her at all.
Long years may pass away, and many generations go to their rest
before the destiny of Ireland is completely fulﬁlled. Years in the life of
nations are as days. Yet we live in times when events succeed each
other with a rapidity that crowds history into a brief space. N 0 one can
say that, even in the years of this generation, events may not occur which
will call on Ireland to bear in the history of mankind a place for which
God has designed her. Sure I am that a very few years of self-government
will exhibit in her people qualities, and virtues, and energies which, long
obscured and even perverted as they have been by slavery and oppression,
will prove for Ireland her ﬁtness for the noblest destiny that has ever
been foreseen for her.
At all events I would not do justice to my own thoughts-I would fail
to speak to the hearts of thousands and tens of thousands who believe,
and feel, and hope as I do, if, even in these pages of practical and
business-like discussion I did not leave the record of our faith in our
country’s future. Most assuredly they have been written with no
wavering in that faith. The proposals they contain are made with no
faltering conﬁdence in that country’s highest and most glorious hopes.

APPENDIX.
KAN/MNWWMN
LISDOONVARNA, October 10, 1870.
DEAR Sm,
I thank you for your pamphlet on Federalism. I have read it
with much interest, and, I may add, with desire to see my way to joining
the movement you have so ably inaugurated for Ireland.
The recent violation of the fundamental condition of the Act of Union
by the disestablishment of the Church removes what might otherwise have
been, with a member of the Protestant establishment, an objection to
moving for its repeal; but now the Protestants of Ireland are as free as
the Roman Catholics always have been to do so.
You have, in your pamphlet, very justly noticed how totally the Union
has failed to produce the beneﬁts that were promised from it, and your
remarks are but too plainly borne out both by the extent to which dis-
aﬁ'ection prevails in Ireland, and by her deplorably backward condition, so
different from the marked advancement of the sister country, in education,
wealth, and all that conduces to national prosperity and contentment. If
the comparison is humiliating to Irishmen it is also discreditable to the
government of the United Kingdom; for whatever other circumstances
may have contributed to produce it, there is one fact that might alone be
quite suﬁicient to account for the contrast between the two countries-it
is that whereas England has the advantage of being governed by those who
are intimately acquainted with her interests, and practically responsible to
her for attending to them, Ireland is powerless to obtain for her interests
the attention they need from ministers who commonly care little and
understand less about them, and who can always plead for their neglect,
what has long been a received axiom in the United Kingdom, that “the
case of Ireland is, and has always been, an insuperable difﬁculty.” Such,
certainly, has been Ireland’s seventy year’s experience of English or
Imperial rule; the suggestion, therefore, that you make in her behalf, of a
home government, and the question how it should be carried out, may
reasonably be urged upon the consideration of those that desire her
welfare.
I am glad that you do not take up the notion of a simple repeal of the
Union, as advocated in the time of O’Connell. Your proposition of a
federal, instead of the legislative, union with Great Britain, would, as you
have shown, render Ireland, in respect of her government, far more inde-
pendent than she would be if she were replaced in the relation to England
in which she stood before the Union, and ‘would, I believe, greatly conduce
to the strength and general interests of the Empire. Your chapter on the
Irish Parliament before the Union, certainly does not. commend to accept-
ance a simple repeal of that Act ; and, on the other hand, what you have
written under the head of “ Failure of the Union Scheme,” regarding the
66 Appendix.
mode of doing Irish business in the United Parliament, shows unquestion-
ably the unsatisfactory nature of the existing relations between the two
countries. The remedy you propose is to give to Ireland a home govern-
ment, under a Federal Union with Great Britain. The question then
arises, how shall so desirable an object be compassed? For this you
would provide by giving at once to Ireland a separate constitution, similar
to that of the United Kingdom. I do not undervalue the British Consti~
tution. In theory it affords the best security for liberty and good govern-
ment, and under it England has risen to her present greatness; but it
must be remembered that it has been, in English soil, a plant of long
growth and gradual development, and that from it has only of late years
arisen that preponderance of power in the popular assembly, for the
exercise of which, with beneﬁt to the community, great experience in the
conduct of public business, and clear views of the interests of the country,
are as necessary as the highest order of native talent and patriotism.
England has been trained to self-government, but Ireland has not; and it
may be doubted whether she at present possesses the materials‘for provi-
ding any constitutional check upon a powerful but inexperienced democracy.
In your chapter on “ The Constitution and Powers of the Irish Parliament,”
you say you would not propose any change in the existing franchise, and
that you would take it as the basis for a considerable extension of repre-
sentation to towns. I do not, I confess, see anything in such a proposition
to beget conﬁdence in the constitution of the future Irish House of Gom—
mons. The public have lately had before them, besides other evidences of
utter unﬁtness for the exercise of an important public trust, the most
disgusting exhibitions of corruption among the constituencies, brought to
light by the trials of election petitions that have followed upon nearly
every contested election. \Vith such experience before us it is at best very
doubtful whether, under the existing franchise, constituent bodies could
be formed likely to choose as their representatives men of high character
and integrity, or who did not seek for seats in Parliament for purposes
rather selﬁsh than patriotic.
\Vere the Irish Members of the Imperial Parliament to be taken as a
sample of those that would compose the future Irish House of Commons,
the future of the country would be seriously compromised by being com-
mitted to such hands. By your own account of what you say was contemp-
tuously called “ the Irish Vote,” (in other words) of the majority of the
Irish Members, returned by the existing constituencies, they have, as a
body, repeatedly lent themselves to party intrigues discreditable to mem-
bers of a legislative assembly, and to the character of the country they
represented ; and I believe it may be afﬁrmed, that for the originating or
carrying of any measure of’ social improvement, Ireland has never been
indebted to “the Irish Vote.” The Poor Law Act for Ireland, which
alone reﬂects credit upon the Imperial Government, and was no party
measure, found no support at their hands, but was, on the contrary,
strenuously opposed by them. I am not prepared to say exactly how the
Representative body for Ireland should be constituted, but to render it
worthy of public conﬁdence, the past would plainly justify a considerable
modiﬁcation of its structure. Greater changes than are necessary should,
of course, be avoided, and existing rights, wherever they have not been
‘A
Appendix. 67
\
abused, should be respected; but all persons to be hereafter admitted to
the elective franchise ought to be qualiﬁed by education for the exercise of
so important a trust; and it would be an act alike of justice and sound
policy to give, in an assembly that should consist of men of the highest
order of intelligence, the right of being represented to the several learned
bodies that at present, with the exception of the Dublin University, are
ignored in the constitution of the House of Commons. It might also be
well, before pressing for the establishment of an Independent Parliament
for Ireland, to await the result of those measures of reform, that are said
to be under consideration, in the mode of voting, and in the distribution of
seats. The constitution, functions, and powers of the House of Lords
would further have to be very carefully considered and deﬁned, before
a legislature of Queen, Lords, and Commons, should be given to, or
accepted by, Ireland.
In the meantime, however, a step might be taken, which, while it would
confer upon our country great and immediate beneﬁts, would be acceptable
to England by the relief it would afford to Parliament from the over-
pressure of business. Having had frequent opportunities of noticing to
what undue costs and inconvenience the promoters of private Bills for Irish
undertakings are subjected, by the needless reiteration of the same evidence
before committees of each of the two Houses of Parliament, involving,
besides the expense of a long journey, that of a protracted detention and
maintenance of witnesses in London, along with the disadvantage of the
objects of their bills being examined into by committees and lawyers both
commonly alike ignorant of the circumstances of the country and of its
population. I have long been of opinion that in lieu of select committees
of the two Houses sitting in London, a general committee composed of the
Irish Members of the House of Commons and of Irish Peers, having seats
in Parliament, meeting in Dublin a month or six weeks before the opening
of the Parliamentary Session, would be a body much better ﬁtted to inquire
into and report upon all private Bills from Ireland intended to be laid
before the two Houses. The work of such general committee would, of
course, be carried out with the aid of sub-committees, before which mem-
bers of the Irish Bar would practice, as English lawyers have done hitherto,
almost exclusively, before committees sitting in London. To the same
general committee might also, in the ﬁrst instance, be submitted, to be
reported upon, all public bills relating exclusively to Ireland. If this were
the rule, due attention would probably be secured to all such measures as
might be of value to the country, and the surreptitious passing of jobs in
legislation, so well exposed in your pamphlet, would be prevented. A
responsibility in the work of legislation for Ireland being thus cast upon
an assembly exclusively Irish, a very important step would have been taken
towards the more complete concession of the right and duty of self-govern-
ment ; and by accustoming the leading men of different parties and creeds
in Ireland to consult together upon the business of the country, the foun-
dation would be laid of that well-understood community of interest in her
Welfare which is essential to the success of such a measure. The above, or
some other such arrangement, giving to Irish Members of both Houses their
due weight and a distinct duty in legislation for Ireland, should commend
itself to the consideration of the British statesmen upon this, as well as
68 A ppenazx.
upon other grounds, viz., that a course of imperial policy so plainly directed
to the good of Ireland, irrespective of creed or party, would more than any
other means tend to remove that spirit of disaffection, that is at present
and has been for a long time, only kept under by extraordinary measures
of coercion, and render Ireland a source of strength to the Queen’s dominions
through the union and loyalty of her population. It must, however, be
remembered that whatever may be said or thought by an Irishman of the
advantages that a home-government might confer upon Ireland, the con-
cession of such a boon must depend upon the will of the Imperial Parliament.
Any hasty or ill-conceived measure would therefore be certainly rejected,
and any attempt to extort it by violence or intimidation as certainly un-
successful. But I have every conﬁdence that if it should be clearly shown
that the concession would be of real advantage both to Ireland and to the
rest of the United Kingdom, it would be favourably considered, and in my
judgment, the time for so considering it is just now the most opportune.
The views I have above suggested would not satisfy these who look for-
ward impatiently to a great end, but they are, I conceive, the best suited
to make that end attainable; and even if the movement were to go no
further than the preliminary step I have suggested, I would prefer to stop
there to taking at once a great leap in the dark.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
OLANCARTY.
Isaac Burr, Esq, Q.C.,
&c., &c., &c.
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