Contents:
Rebellions are never really unconquerable until they have become rebellions for an idea. Revolt against practical ill-usage may be quelled by concessions; but wait till all practical grievances have merged in the demand for independence, and there is no knowing that any concession, short of independence, will appease the quarrel. But what, it will be asked, is the provocation that England is giving to Ireland, now that she has left off crushing her commerce and persecuting her religion?
What harm to Ireland does England intend, or knowingly inflict? What good, that she knows how to give her, would she not willingly bestow? Unhappily, her offence is precisely that she does not know; and is so well contented with not knowing, that Irishmen who are not hostile to her are coming to believe that she will not and cannot learn.
The English people ought to ask themselves, seriously and without prejudice, what it is that gives sober men this opinion of them; and endeavour to remove it, or humbly confess that it is true, and fulfil the only duty which remains performable by them on that supposition, that of withdrawing from the attempt. More than a generation has elapsed since we renounced the desire to govern Ireland for the English: But we neither knew, nor knew that we did not know. We had got a set of institutions of our own, which we thought suited us—whose imperfections we were, at any rate, used to: Ireland, it seemed, could have nothing more to desire.
What was not too bad for us, must be good enough for Ireland, or if not. Ireland or the nature of things was alone in fault. It is always a most difficult task which a people assumes when it attempts to govern, either in the way of incorporation or as a dependency, another people very unlike itself. But whoever reflects on the constitution of society in these two countries, with any sufficient knowledge of the states of society which exist elsewhere, will be driven, however unwillingly, to the conclusion, that there is probably no other nation of the civilized world, which, if the task of governing Ireland had happened to devolve on it, would not have shown itself more capable of that work than England has hitherto done.
The reasons are these: First, there is no other civilized nation which is so conceited of its own institutions, and of all its modes of public action, as England is; and secondly, there is no other civilized nation which is so far apart from Ireland in the character of its history, or so unlike it in the whole constitution of its social economy; and none, therefore, which if it applies to Ireland the modes of thinking and maxims of government which have grown up within itself, is so certain to go wrong.
The first indeed of our disqualifications, our conceit of ourselves, is certainly diminishing. Our governing classes are now quite accustomed to be told that the institutions which they thought must suit all mankind since they suited us, require far greater alteration than they dream of to be fit even for ourselves. When they were told this, they have long been in the habit of answering, that whatever defects these institutions may have in theory, they are suited to the opinions, the feelings, and the historical antecedents of the English people. But mark how little they really mean by this vindication.
If suitability to the opinions, feelings, and historical antecedents of those who live under them is the best recommendation of institutions, it ought to have been remembered, that the opinions, feelings, and historical antecedents of the Irish people are totally different from, and in many respects contrary to those of the English; and that things which in England find their chief justification in their being liked, cannot admit of the same justification in a country where they are detested. But the reason which recommends institutions to their own supporters, and that which is used to stop the mouths of opponents, are far from being always one and the same.
Let us take as an example, that one of our institutions which has the most direct connexion with the worst practical grievances of Ireland; absolute property in land, the land being engrossed by a comparatively small number of families. I am not going to discuss this institution, or to express, on the present occasion, any opinion about its abstract merits. Let these, if we will, be transcendant—let it be the best and highest form of agricultural and social economy, for anything I mean to say to the contrary.
But I do say that this is not self-evident. It is not one of the truths which shine so brilliantly by their own light, that they are assented to by every sane man the moment he understands the words in which they are conveyed. On the contrary, what present themselves the most obviously at the first aspect of this institution are the objections to it. That a man should have absolute control over what his own labour and skill have created, and even over what he has received by gift or bequest from those who created it, is recommended by reasons of a very obvious character, and does not shock any natural feeling.
Moveable property can be produced in indefinite quantity, and he who disposes as he likes of anything which, it can fairly be argued, would not have existed but for him, does no wrong to any one. Such appropriation, when there is not enough left for all, is at the first aspect, an usurpation on the rights of other people. And though it is manifestly just that he who sows should be allowed to reap, this justice, which is the true moral foundation of property in land, avails little in favour of proprietors who reap but do not sow, and who assume the right of ejecting those who do.
When the general condition of the land of a country is such as this, its title to the submission and attachment of those whom it seems to disinherit, is by no means obvious. It is a state of things which has great need of extrinsic recommendations. It requires to be rooted in the traditions and oldest recollections of the people; the landed families must be identified with the religion of the country, with its nationality, with its ancient rulers, leaders, defenders, teachers, and other objects of gratitude and veneration, or at least of ungrudging obedience.
These conditions have been found, in some considerable measure, or at all events, nothing contrary to them has been found, for many centuries, in England. All that is most opposite to them has at all times existed in Ireland. The traditions and recollections of native Irish society are wholly the contrary way. Before the Conquest, the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land. The land virtually belonged to the entire sept; the chief was little more than the managing member of the association.
The feudal idea, which views all rights as emanating from a head landlord, came in with the conquest, was associated with foreign dominion, and has never to this day been recognised by the moral sentiments of the people. Originally the offspring not of industry but of spoliation, the right has not been allowed to purify itself by protracted possession, but has passed from the original spoliators to others by a series of fresh spoliations, so as to be always connected with the latest and most odious oppressions of foreign invaders. In the moral feelings of the Irish people, the right to hold the land goes, as it did in the beginning, with the right to till it.
There are parts of Europe, such as East Prussia, where the land is chiefly owned in large estates, but where almost every landowner farms his own land. In Ireland, until a recent period, any one who knew the country might almost have counted those who did anything for their estate but consume its produce. The landlords were a mere burthen on the land.
The whole rental of the country was wasted in maintaining, often in reckless extravagance, people who were not nearly as useful to the hive as the drones are, and were entitled to less respect. These are the antecedents of Irish history in respect to property in land. Let any Englishman put himself in the position of an Irish peasant, and ask himself whether, if the case were his own, the landed property of the country would have any sacredness to his feelings. Even the Whiteboy and the Rockite, in their outrages against the landlord, fought for, not against, the sacredness of what was property in their eyes; for it is not the right of the rent-receiver, but the right of the cultivator, with which the idea of property is connected in the Irish popular mind.
These facts being notorious, and the feelings engendered by them being, in part at least, perfectly reasonable in the eyes of every civilized people in the world except England, it is a characteristic specimen of the practical good sense by which England is supposed to be distinguished, that she should persist to this hour in forcing upon a people with such feelings, and such antecedents, her own idea of absolute property in land.
If those who created English manufactures, commerce, navigation, and dominion, to say nothing of English literature and science, had gone to work in this style—had shown this amount of judgment in the adaptation of means to ends—England would at the present time have been in something like the condition of the Papal territory, or of Spain. Thus much as to the harmony of certain English institutions with the feelings and prepossessions of the Irish people, which, according to the received doctrine of our historical Conservatives, is the first point to be considered in either retaining old institutions or introducing new.
But now, apart from the question of acceptability to Ireland, let us consider whether our own laws and usages, at least in relation to land, are the model we should even desire to follow in governing Ireland; whether the circumstances of the two countries are sufficiently similar, to warrant the belief, that things which may work well, or may not be fatally destructive to prosperity, in England, will be useful or innocuous, even if voluntarily accepted by the people of the neighbouring island.
What are the main features in the social economy of Ireland?
First, it is a country wholly agricultural. The entire population, with some not very important exceptions, cultivates the soil, or depends for its subsistence on cultivation. In this respect, if all the countries of Europe except Russia were arranged in a scale, Ireland would be at one extremity of the scale, England and Scotland at the other. In Great Britain, not more than a third of the population subsists by agriculture. In most countries of the Continent a great majority do so, though in no country but Russia so great a majority as in Ireland. Ireland, therefore, in this essential particular, bears more resemblance to almost any other country in Europe than she does to Great Britain.
When the agricultural population are but a fraction of the entire people; when the commercial and manufacturing development of the country leaves a large opening for the children of the agriculturists to seek and find subsistence elsewhere than on the soil; a bad tenure of land, though always mischievous, can in some measure be borne with. But when a people have no means of sustenance but the land, the conditions on which the land can be occupied, and support derived from it, are all in all.
Now, under an apparent resemblance, those conditions are radically different in Ireland and in England. In England the land is rented and cultivated by capitalist farmers; in Ireland, except in the grazing districts, principally by manual labourers, or small farmers in nearly the same condition in life. The multitude of other differences which flow from this one difference, it would be too prolix to detail. There are many other countries in which the land is owned principally in large masses, and farmed in great part by manual labourers.
But I doubt if there be now any other part of Europe where, as a general rule, these farm-labourers are entirely without a permanent interest in the soil. The serfs certainly were not; they could not be turned out of their holdings.
It is only in parts of Belgium that it is a frequent practice for small farmers to hold from large proprietors, with no other legal protection than the stipulations of a short lease: They, moreover, live in the midst of a large and thriving manufacturing industry, which takes off the hands that might otherwise compete unduly for the soil. So long as they remain in the country of their birth, their support must be drawn from a source for the permanence of which they have no guarantee, and the failure of which leaves them nothing to depend on but the poor-house.
In one circumstance alone England and Ireland are alike: In the opinion of great landlords, and of the admirers of the state of society which produces them, this is enough: Great landlords can do as they like with their estates, on this side of St. But in the first place, English landlords do not let their land to a labourer, but to a capitalist farmer, who is able to take care of his own interest. The capitalist has not to choose between the possession of a farm and destitution; the labourer has.
This element subverts the whole basis on which the letting of farms, as a business transaction, and the foundation of a national economy, requires to rest. The capitalist farmer will beware of offering a rent that will leave him no profit; the peasant farmer will promise any amount of rent, whether he can pay it or not. England, moreover, not being a purely agricultural, but a commercial country, even great landlords learn to look at the management of estates in a somewhat commercial spirit, and can see their own advantage where the love of political influence does not binterfereb in making it the interest of the tenant to improve the land; or, if they can afford to do so, will often improve it for him.
If a tenant here and there is able and willing to make them a little better than ordinary, or to add in any other manner to the productiveness and value of the farm, there is nothing to prevent the landlord from waiting till it is done, and then seizing on the result, or requiring from the tenant additional rent for the use of the fruits of his own labour; and so many landlords even of high rank are not ashamed to do this, that it is evident their compeers do not think it at all disgraceful. It is usual to impute the worst abuses of Irish landlordism to middlemen.
What might not be hoped from a people who had the energy and enterprise to create a flourishing town under liability to be robbed? And to what sympathy or consideration are those entitled who avail themselves of a bad law to perpetrate what is morally robbery? When Irishmen ask to be protected against deeds of this description, they are told that the law they complain of is the same which exists in England. What signifies it that the law is the same, if opinion and the social circumstances of the country are better than the law, and prevent the oppression which the law permits?
It is bad that one can be robbed in due course of law, but it is greatly worse when one actually is. England, with her capitalist farmers and her powerful public opinion, can afford to leave improper power in the hands of her great landlords—not, indeed, without serious evil to her agricultural population, the state of dwhomd is generally felt to be the most peccant part of her social condition; not without evil to all over whom power is exercised through the votes of that population; but yet without hindrance to the attainment, by the nation as a whole, of great wealth and prosperity.
Ireland is very differently circumstanced. When, as a general rule, the land of a country is farmed by the very hands that till it, the social economy resulting is intolerable, unless either by law or custom the tenant is protected against arbitrary eviction, or arbitrary increase of rent. Nor is there any country of Western Europe save England unless Spain be an exception which, if Ireland had belonged to it, would not before this time have seen and acted on that principle; because there is not one which is not familiar with the principle and its bearings, from ample experience.
England alone is without such experience of its own, and knows and cares too little about foreign countries to benefit by theirs. At a particular moment of the revolutionary war, a French armament, led by the illustrious Hoche, was only prevented by stress of weather from effecting a landing in Ireland. At that moment it was on the cards whether Ireland should not belong to France, or at least be organized as an independent country under French protection.
Had this happened, does any one believe that the Irish peasant would not have become even as the French peasant? Ireland would then have been in the condition in which small farming, and tenancy by manual labourers, are consistent with good agriculture and public prosperity.
The small holder would have laboured for himself and not for others, and his interest would have coincided with the interest of the country in making every plot of land produce its utmost. What Hoche would have done for the Irish peasant, or its equivalent, has still to be done; and any government which will not do it does not fulfil the rational and moral conditions of a government. There is no necessity that it should be done as Hoche would most likely have done it, without indemnity to the losers.
A few years ago it might not have been necessary to do as much as he would have done. The distribution of the waste land in peasant properties might then have sufficed. Perhaps even such small measures as that of securing to tenants a moderate compensation, in money or by length of lease, for improvements actually made, and abolishing the unjust privilege of distraining for rent, might have appeased or postponed disaffection, and given to great-landlordism a fresh term of existence. The Irish are no longer reduced to take anything they can get.
They have acquired the sense of being supported by prosperous multitudes of their countrymen on the opposite side of the Atlantic. These it is who will furnish the leaders, the pecuniary resources, the skill, the military discipline, and a great part of the effective force, in any future Irish rebellion: With these for leaders, and a people like the Irish, always ready to trust implicitly those whom they think hearty in their cause, no accommodation is henceforth possible which does not give the Irish peasant all that he could gain by a revolution—permanent possession of the land, subject to fixed burthens.
Such a change may be revolutionary; but revolutionary measures are the thing now required. It is not necessary that the revolution should be violent, still less that it should be unjust. It may and it ought to respect existing pecuniary interests which have the sanction of law. An equivalent ought to be given for the bare pecuniary value of all mischievous rights which landlords or any others are required to part with.
But no mercy ought to be shown to the mischievous rights themselves; no scruples of purely English birth ought to stay our hands from effecting, since it has come to that, a real revolution in the economical and social constitution of Ireland. In the completeness of the revolution will lie its safety. Anything less than complete, unless as a step to completion, will give no help. If ever, in our time, Ireland is to be a consenting party to her union with England, the changes must be so made that the existing generation of Irish farmers shall at once enter upon their benefits.
The rule of Ireland now rightfully belongs to those who, by means consistent with justice, will make the cultivators of the soil of Ireland the owners of it; and the English nation has got to decide whether it will be that just ruler or not. Englishmen are not always incapable of shaking off insular prejudices, and governing another country according to its wants, and not according to common English habits and notions.
In London Esther Bick also began working again at a child guidance clinic, which she really loved. We had got a set of institutions of our own, which we thought suited us—whose imperfections we were, at any rate, used to: Es gab aber dennoch Aspekte ihres Denkens, denen etwas Wesentliches gemeinsam war und die infolgedessen zu einem besonderen Klima in den 60iger und 70iger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts beitrugen. Liest man Heideggers Vorlesungen aus dem Wintersemester , so wird ihm klar, dass seine publizierten Kritiken an der Philosophischen Anthropologie nicht stimmen. Lasst euren Charme spielen.
It is what they have had to do in India; and those Englishmen who know something of India, are even now those who understand Ireland best. Persons who know both countries, have remarked many points of resemblance between the Irish and the Hindoo character; there certainly are many between the agricultural economy of Ireland and that of India. But, by a fortunate accident, the business of ruling India in the name of England did not rest with the Houses of Parliament or the offices at Westminster; it devolved on men who passed their lives in India, and made Indian interests their professional occupation.
There was also the advantage, that the task was laid upon England after nations had begun to have a conscience, and not while they were sunk in the reckless savagery of the middle ages. The English rulers, accordingly, reconciled themselves to the idea that their business was not to sweep away the rights they found established, or wrench and compress them into the similitude of something English, but to ascertain what they were; having ascertained them, to abolish those only which were absolutely mischievous; otherwise to protect them, and use them as a starting point for further steps in improvement.
This work of stripping off their preconceived English ideas was at first done clumsily and imperfectly, and at the cost of many mistakes; but as they honestly meant to do it, they in time succeeded, and India is now governed, if with a large share of the ordinary imperfections of rulers, yet with a full perception and recognition of its differences from England. What has been done for India has now to be done for Ireland; and as we should have deserved to be turned out of the one, had we not proved equal to the need, so shall we to lose the other.
It is not consistent with self-respect, in a nation any more than in an individual, to wait till it is compelled by uncontrollable circumstances to resign that which it cannot in conscience hold. Before allowing its government to involve it in another repetition of the attempt to maintain English dominion over Ireland by brute force, the English nation ought to commune with its conscience, and solemnly reconsider its position. If so, what are we dreaming of, when we give our sympathy to the Poles, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Servians, the Greeks, and I know not how many other oppressed nationalities?
On what principle did we act when we renounced the government of the Ionian Islands? Yet it is not impertinent to say, that to hold Ireland permanently by the old bad means is simply impossible. Were we to attempt it, and a rebellion, so provoked, could hold its ground but for a few weeks, there would be an explosion of indignation all over the civilized world; on this single occasion Liberals and Catholics would be unanimous; Papal volunteeers and Garibaldians would fight side by side against us for the independence of Ireland, until the many enemies of British prosperity had time to complicate the situation by a foreign war.
Were we even able to prevent a rebellion, or suppress it the moment it broke out, the holding down by military violence of a people in desperation, constantly struggling to break their fetters, is a spectacle which Russia is still able to give to mankind, because Russia is almost inaccessible to a foreign enemy; but the attempt could not long succeed with a country so vulnerable as England, having territories to defend in every part of the globe, and half her population dependent on foreign commerce.
Neither do I believe that the mass of the British people, those who are not yet corrupted by power, would permit the attempt.
The prophets who, judging, I presume, from themselves, always augur the worst of the moral sentiments of their countrymen, are already asseverating that, whether right or wrong, the British people would rather devastate Ireland from end to end and root out its inhabitants, than consent to its separation from England.
If we believe them, the people of England are a kind of bloodhounds, always ready to break loose and perpetrate Jamaica horrors, unless they, and their like, are there to temper and restrain British brutality. This representation does not accord with my experience. I believe that these prophecies proceed from men who seek to make their countrymen responsible for what they themselves are burning to commit; and that the rising power in our affairs, the democracy of Great Britain, is opposed, on principle, to holding any people in subjection against their will.
The time is come when the democracy of one country will join hands with the democracy of another, rather than back their own ruling authorities in putting it down. I shall not believe, until I see it proved, that the English and Scotch people are capable of the folly and wickedness of carrying fire and sword over Ireland in order that their rulers may govern Ireland contrary to the will of the Irish people. That they would put down a partial outbreak, in order to get a fair trial for a system of government beneficent and generally acceptable to the people, I readily believe; nor should I in any way blame them for so doing.
It would be a deep disgrace to us, that having the choice of, on the one hand, a peaceful legislative revolution in the laws and rules affecting the relation of the inhabitants to the soil, or on the other, of abandoning a task beyond our skill, and leaving Ireland to rule herself, incapacity for the better of the two courses should drive us to the worse. For that it would be greatly the worse even for Ireland, many Irishmen, even Irish Catholics, are probably still calm enough to perceive, if but good government can be had without it.
Not only are they more powerful for defence against a foreign enemy combined than separate, but, if separate, they would be a standing menace to one another. Parted at the present time and with their present feelings, the two islands would be, of all countries in Europe, those which would have the most hostile disposition towards one another.
Too much bitter feeling still remains between England and the United States, more than eighty years after separation; and Ireland has suffered from England, for many centuries, evils compared with which the greatest grievances of the Americans were, in all but their principle, insignificant. The persevering reciprocation of insults between English and American newspapers and public speakers has, before now, brought those two countries to the verge of a war; would there not be even more of this between countries still nearer neighbours, on the morrow of an unfriendly separation?
In the perpetual state of irritated feeling thus kept up, trifles would become causes of quarrel. Disputes more or less serious, even collisions, would be for ever liable to occur. Ireland, therefore, besides having to defend herself against all other enemies, internal and external, without English help, would feel obliged to keep herself always armed and in readiness to fight England.
A war-tax assessed upon the soil, for want of other taxable material, would be no small set-off against what the peasant would gain even by the entire cessation of rent. The burthen of the necessity of being always prepared for war, was no unimportant part of the motive which made the Northern States of America prefer a war at once to allowing the South to secede from the Union.
Yet the necessity would not have weighed so heavily on them as it would on Ireland, because they were both the most powerful half of the American Union and the richest. To England, the necessity of being always in a state of preparation against Ireland would be comparatively a less inconvenience, because she already has to maintain, for defence against foreigners, a force that would in general suffice for both purposes.
But Ireland would have to create both a fleet and an army; and, after all that could be done, so oppressive would be her sense of insecurity, that she would probably be driven to compromise her newly acquired independence, and seek the protection of alliances with Continental powers. Were she to choose the smaller evil, and remain free from any permanent entanglement, all enemies of Great Britain would not the less confidently look forward to an Irish alliance, and to being allowed to use Ireland as a basis of attack against Great Britain.
Ireland would probably become, like Belgium formerly, one of the battle-fields of European war: In all this I am supposing that Ireland would succeed in establishing a regular and orderly government: Suppose that she had to pass through an interval of partial anarchy first? What if there were a civil war between the Protestant and Catholic Irish, or between Ulster and the other provinces? Is it in human nature that the sympathies of England should not be principally with the English Protestant colony, and would not she either help that side, or be constantly believed to be on the point of helping it?
To England it would be an inconvenience; to Ireland a public calamity, not only in the way of direct burthen, but by the paralyzing effect of a general feeling of insecurity upon industrial energy and enterprise. But there is a contingency beyond all this, from the possibility of which we ought not to avert our eyes. Ireland might be invaded and conquered by a great military power. She might become a province of France.
This is not the least likely thing to befal her, if her independence of England should be followed by protracted disorders, such as to make peaceably disposed persons welcome an armed pacificator capable of imposing on the conflicting parties a common servitude. How bitter such a result of all their struggles ought to be to patriotic Irishmen, I will not stop to show. But I ask any patriotic Englishman what he would think of such a prospect; and whether he is disposed to run the risk of it, in order that a few hundred families of the upper classes may continue to possess the land of Ireland, instead of its pecuniary value.
All this evil, it may be thought, could be prevented by agreeing beforehand upon a close alliance and perpetual confederacy between the two nations. But is it likely that the party which had effected a separation in home affairs, would desire or consent to unity in foreign relations? A confederacy is an agreement to have the same friends and enemies, and can only subsist between peoples who have the same interests and feelings, and who, if they fight at all, would wish to fight on the same side. Great Britain and Ireland, if all community of interest between them were cut off, would generally prefer to be on contrary sides.
Besides, America is the country with which we are at present in most danger of having serious difficulties; and Ireland would be far more likely to confederate with America against us, than with us against America. But even the most Catholic of Irishmen may reasonably consider that Irish influence in the British Parliament is a great mitigator of British hostility to things with which Ireland sympathizes; that a Pro-Catholic element in the House of Commons, which no English Government can venture to despise, helps to prevent the whole power of Great Britain from being in the hands of the Anti-Catholic element still so strong in England and Scotland.
If there is any party in Great Britain which would not have cause to regret the separation of Ireland, it is the fanatical Protestant party. It may well be doubted if an independent Ireland could in any way give such effective support to any cause to which Ireland is attached, as by the forbearance and moderation which her presence in British councils imposes upon the power which would be likeliest, in case of conflict, to lead the van of the contrary side.
In return, Irishmen would be shut out from all positions in Great Britain, except those which can be held by foreigners. There would be no more Irish prime-ministers, Irish commanders-in-chief, Irish generals and admirals in the British army and fleet. The loss would exceed the gain, not only by calculation, but in feeling. The first man in a small country would often gladly exchange positions with the fourth or fifth in a great one.
But why, it may be asked, cannot Ireland remain united with the British Crown by a mere personal tie, having the management of her own affairs, as Canada has, though a part of the same empire? The former of these relations would be to Ireland a derogation, a descent from even her present position.
She is now at least a part of the governing country. She has something to say in the general affairs of the empire. Canada is but a dependency, with a provincial government, allowed to make its own laws and impose its taxes, but subject to the veto of the mother-country and not consulted at all about alliances or wars, in which it is nevertheless compelled to join.
An union such as this can only exist as a temporary expedient, between countries which look forward to separation as soon as the weaker is able to stand alone, and which care not much how soon it comes. This mode of union, moreover, is still recent; it has stood no trials; it has not yet been exposed to the greatest trial—that of war. Let war come, by an act of the British Government in which Canada is not represented, and from a motive in which Canada is not concerned, and how long will Canada be content to share the burthens and the dangers?
Even in home affairs, Ireland would not relish the position of Canada. The veto of the Crown is virtually that of the British Parliament; and though it might, as in the case of Canada, be discreetly confined to what were considered imperial questions, the decision what questions were imperial would rest with the country in whose councils Ireland would no longer have a voice. It is very improbable that the veto would stop at things which, in the opinion of the subordinate country, were proper subjects for it.
Canada is a great way off, and British rulers can tolerate much in a place from which they are not afraid that the contagion may spread to England.
But Ireland is marked out for union with England, if only by this, that nothing important can take place in the one without making its effects felt in the other. If the British Parliament could sufficiently shake off its prejudices to use the veto on Irish legislation rightly, it could shake them off sufficiently to legislate for Ireland rightly, or to allow the Irish, as it already allows the Scotch members, to transact the business of their own country mainly by themselves.
These objections would not apply to an equal union, like that which has recently been agreed upon between Austria and Hungary. In that there is nothing humiliating to the pride of either country. But if the Canadian system has had but a short trial, the dual system of Austria and Hungary has had none. It has existed only a bare twelvemonth. Hungary, it is true, has been much longer attached by a personal bond to the reigning family of Austria, and Hungary had a Constitution, with some of the elements of freedom; but Austria had not.
The difficulty of keeping two countries together without uniting them, begins with constitutional liberty. Countries very dissimilar in character, and even with some internal freedom, may be governed as England and Scotland were by the Stuarts, so long as the people have only certain limited rights, and the government of the two countries practically resides in a single will above them both. The difficulty arises when the unforced concurrence of both nations is required for the principal acts of their government.
This relation, between Austria and Hungary, never existed till now. In the first place, the two countries are nearly equal in military resources and prowess. They have fairly tried themselves against one another in open war, and know that neither can conquer the other without foreign aid.
In the next place, while each is equally formidable to the other, each stands in need of the other for its own safety; neither is sufficient to itself for maintaining its independence against powerful and encroaching neighbours. Lastly, they do not start with hostile feelings in the masses of either country towards the other. Hungary has not the wrongs of centuries to revenge; her direct injuries from Austria never reached the labouring classes, but were confined to portions of society whose conduct is directed more by political interest than by vindictive feeling.
The reverse of all this is true between Great Britain and Ireland. The most favourable of all combinations of circumstances for the success and permanence of an equal alliance between independent nations under the same crown, exists between Hungary and Austria, the least favourable between England and Ireland. The only one of them of which this could be said is the alienation of feeling, and this, if the real grounds of bitterness were removed, the close intercourse and community of interest engendered by union would more and more tend to heal: The democracy of Ireland, and those who are likely to be its first leaders, have, at all events, yet to prove their possession of qualities at all similar.
Einer gut bekannten Rechnung zufolge ist das ganze Territorium der Insel dreimal konfisziert worden. Eine Nation, die ihre Untergebenen auf diese Art behandelt, kann nicht erwarten, von ihnen geliebt zu werden. Die fremde Kirche gibt es in der Tat immer noch. Aber der Todesengel trat herbei und beseitigte dieses Gespenst vor unseren Toren. Irland sei nunmehr nicht nur gut regiert sondern wohlhabend und auf einem guten Weg. Ihre Staatskunst ist schlecht, ihr Gewissen aber gut.
Ach, die selbstzufriedene Ignoranz verantwortungsloser Regierender, ob nun Monarchen, Klassen oder Nationen! Wie aber wird Irland von England provoziert, so fragt man sich, da England nunmehr darauf verzichtet, den Handel der Iren zu vernichten und deren Religion zu verfolgen? Aber weder wussten wir das, noch wussten wir, dass wir es nicht wussten. Zweitens aber ist keine andere zivilisierte Nation bezogen auf den Charakter ihrer Geschichte so von Irland verschieden oder so anders hinsichtlich der Grundlagen ihrer Sozialwirtschaft.
Man bemerke jedoch, wie wenig sie wirklich zu dieser Rechtfertigung stehen. Aber ich sage, dies versteht sich nicht vom selbst. Ob man es braucht oder nicht, ist eine andere Frage. Ich nehme immer weibliche Chars.. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. You are about to leave this website Originally Posted by Cretinus Nennt sich "lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz" und ist eine mogelpackung. Nur der mensch ist da noch nicht soweit. Aber auch das kommt noch. Gemeinsam ein kind adoptieren geht nicht, denke ich.
Anders als bei einer heterosexuellen ehe. Vetra ist eine Turianerin. Leider habt ihr bei ihr nicht allzu viele Chancen, um zu flirten. Darum solltet ihr jede euch bietende Gelegenheit nutzen und mit ihr sprechen. Jetzt wird sie euch nach Kadara einladen. Fahrt also mit ihr in eurem Squad dorthin. Sprecht nun also mit PeeBee und trefft eure Entscheidung.
Jaal Ama Darav ist ein Angarer. Allerdings gibt es bei Jaal eine Besonderheit. Habt ihr diese abgeschlossen, dann solltet ihr eure E-Mails checken, dann wird sich die Beziehung richtig entfalten. Vertieft eure Beziehung, indem ihr ein paar Runden Poker mit ihm spielt. Er wird euch einladen, ihn auf Prodromos zu treffen. Beziehung ja oder nein? Das Pendant zu Gil ist Suvi, die lediglich auf Frauen steht.
Sara Ryder hat es dagegen ziemlich leicht, eine Romanze mit ihr zu beginnen. Suvi ist Wissenschaftsoffizierin auf der Tempest. Das bietet sich immer zwischen zwei Missionen an. Die Asari Keri arbeitet als Journalistin. Lasst euren Charme spielen. Ihr solltet also ihre Interviewanfragen stets befriedigen, um selbst Befriedigung zu erhalten.