Harold Spender - Home Rule

It must surely be clear to-day to many of those who opposed the Home Rule Bill of 1893 that there is a problem of which the solution is now more urgent than ever. We who were Gladstonian Home Rulers approached the problem originally from the Irish side: those who did not then approach it from that side refused to admit the existence of any problem at all. Since that time circumstances have made it necessary to approach the problem from the British as well as from the Irish side.

The British Parliament has hitherto been regarded as a model to be imitated; if it continues to attempt the impossible task of transacting in detail both local and Imperial business, it will end as an example to be avoided. In the last fifty years the amount of work demanded for particular portions of the United Kingdom, for the United Kingdom as a whole, or for the Empire has increased enormously; in all three categories the work is still increasing and will increase: one Parliament cannot do it all. This is one new aspect of the Home Rule question.

Mr. Spender states the case with force and sympathy from the Irish point of view, with which none of us, who were convinced supporters of Home Rule twenty years ago can ever lose sympathy, and with which the younger generation should make itself acquainted. He makes also a very valuable and opportune review of recent changes in the situation, and considers how Home Rule should be adapted to British and Imperial needs, and should serve them. The whole book is the result of his own reflection, observation and research; the conclusions to which he comes for the settlement of the financial and other details of Home Rule ought to receive most careful consideration as valuable contributions to the discussion of the subject. But, of course, they must not be assumed necessarily to be mine or to be those that will be adopted in the Government Bill.

But I agree with him entirely that Home Rule is necessary to heal bitterness in Ireland, and to effect that reconciliation without which there cannot be real union: that it is necessary to relieve Parliament at Westminster and to set it free for work that concerns the United Kingdom as a whole or the Empire: in other words, that there is a problem to be solved, and that the first step in solving it must be Irish Home Rule in a form that opens the way for Federal Home Rule.

In the autumn of 1910 a considerable part, at any rate, of the Conservative Party seemed ready to admit the need for some solution: to-day they have apparently drifted back to the barren position of opposing all proposals for Home Rule: if they were to render this solution impossible, they would but make the problem more urgent.

EDWARD GREY.

February, 1912.

Very nearly a generation of time has elapsed since, in 1886, Mr. Gladstone expounded in the British House of Commons his first Bill for restoring to Ireland a Home Rule Parliament. Nearly twenty years have passed since that same great man, indomitably defying age and infirmities in the pursuit of his great ideal, passed the second Home Rule Bill (1893) through the British House of Commons. That Bill stands to-day unshaken in regard to all its vital clauses. Some of us still hold the faith that that Bill would, if it had become law in 1893, have saved Ireland from many years of wastage, and would have built up, to face our enemies in the gate, a stronger and stouter fabric of Empire.