Englishmen thoroughly appreciate the idea of nationality except when it applies to Ireland.
Mr. Redmond has been recently censured because he said, in effect, that material prosperity is not everything. Yet what did Mr. Disraeli say in his inaugural address to the University of Glasgow in 1873:
“It is not true that physical happiness is the highest happiness; it is not true that physical happiness is a principle on which you can build up a flourishing and enduring commonwealth. A civilised community must rest on a large realised capital of thought and sentiment; there must be a reserved fund of public morality to draw upon in the exigencies of national life. Society has a soul as well as a body, the traditions of a nation are part of its existence. Its valour and its discipline, its religious faith, its venerable laws, its science and erudition, its poetry, its art, its eloquence and its scholarship, are as much portions of its existence as its agriculture, its commerce, and its engineering skill. Nay, I would go further, I would say that without these qualities, material excellence cannot be attained.”
That is the true doctrine. The spirit of nationality is the spirit of life. Material progress itself springs from national freedom.
XIII.—The History Of Devolution. BY THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN
Before attempting to sketch the history of devolution in connection with Ireland, two somewhat remarkable facts should be mentioned. A widespread impression appears to exist that devolution as a means for solving the Irish political problem is a modern invention, and that I am, in a large measure, responsible for its introduction. I must in honesty disclaim the honour. There is nothing new either in the expression or in its application to Ireland. The term has been freely used by many statesmen, and, as I think I can demonstrate, the advocacy of a scheme of Devolution for Ireland has not been confined to any one of the two great political parties of the State.
The second remarkable fact in connection with devolution, in its latest expression, is the hostile attitude assumed towards it by the Nationalist party. That the programme, modest as it was, published by the Irish Reform Association in 1904 should have been assailed by many Unionists was natural enough, but that any Nationalists should have denounced it with equal or greater bitterness is very difficult to account for. The wiser spirits welcomed the movement. The leader of the party—Mr. John Redmond—alluding to us in America, said: “With these men with us Home Rule may come at any moment,” and the Convention of the United Irish League of America spoke of our action as “a victory unparalleled in the whole history of moral warfare.” But Mr. John Dillon and Mr. Michael Davitt took a very different view and condemned us in no measured terms. Mr. Davitt at Clonmacnoise on September 4th, 1904, said: “If we are foolish enough to be wiled by Lord Dunraven and Mr. George Wyndham, who is possibly behind this wooden-horse stratagem, we will richly merit the contempt of our race and friends everywhere for so abject a surrender of the National Movement,” and at Enniscorthy, far from agreeing with Mr. Redmond that our assistance was of the greatest value to the cause of Home Rule, he declared that: “No party or leader can consent to accept the Dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust.” Mr. Dillon at Sligo accused devolution of being a scheme to “break National unity in Ireland and to block the advance of the Nationalist cause.”