problem seems to be that suggested by the appointment of Edward I as Dominus Hiberniæ, but so that the land of Ireland shall never be separated from the Crown of England.' Summing up the situation at the end of the Middle Ages, Prof. Curtis says:

'Another result of this absenteeism of the Crown was the general revival of the Irish world in speech, land tenure, and the social order. The Norman-English-Welsh who effected the temporary conquest of two-thirds of the island, few in themselves and never [sufficiently] reinforced by fresh colonies, were inevitably destined to become a semi-Gaelic aristocracy ruling over that mass of Gaelic humanity which swamped the Englishry. When Ireland might have been made a second England, the dominant English, where they did not emigrate or die out, turned Irish as surely as the Franks in the Holy Land turned into Orientals. This is not to say that the masses of the colonists lost all pride in their Englishry. Right up to the fall of the House of Kildare, the old English prided themselves on a a sort of colonial or "middle nation" patriotism much like the 18th-century patriotism of Grattan and Charlemont. .. But under cover of this old English nationalism the Anglo-Irish developed a great if unpolitical affection for native things.'

This appears to us to be admirably stated. Our only regret is that we cannot share Prof. Curtis's admiration of native things.'

It is interesting to turn from Prof. Curtis's laboured efforts to depict Gaelic civilisation in a favourable light, to Miss Olive Armstrong's glowing defence of AngloNorman rule in Ireland. Irish polity, she holds, rested on the rule of force. There was no State, so consequently there was no crime against the State. What the Norman did was to substitute for force the reign of law.

"The Normans gave more to Europe than any other people of the middle ages. The peculiar gift which they brought to England was the supremacy of the king. . . Such kingly supremacy was a very strong thing and very good-very strong in its efficiency, very good in the easy passage it provided for the rule of law. when Ireland was added to the realm. . . its threefold functions were well established -firstly, the great officers or government; secondly, the council or parliament; thirdly, the court of law. . . . Ireland

benefited from every one of the changes which transformed the government of England from the rule of the king into the rule of the law. . . . We do not claim that this rule was universal. Our contention is that it comprehended the whole country, that it was being enlarged every day, and that it was capable of extension at any moment, over the whole.'

It is impossible in the space at our disposal to discuss Miss Armstrong's ingenious but, in our opinion, utterly mistaken account of Edward Bruce's invasion; but we entirely agree with her that the invasion was only the occasion of the decline of the English power in Ireland. To what cause or causes that decline was due it is difficult to say. In Miss Armstrong's opinion it was mainly attributable to inefficient government.

The essential of any government,' she says, 'is that there shall be a body of people who want it, and who are able and willing to work it. It must never be forgotten that this condition held in Ireland. The liege people [English and Irish] wanted the government they had. . . . The government might have taken them, as it had done before, and on them built a commonwealth outside the distinction of class Instead it blundered on from bad to worse. The principle of government was no longer to be loyalty, but English blood. . . . And so the strength that might have been found in the liege people was lost to the Crown. . The invasion of Bruce was the occasion of the trouble, but the neglect of the lieges was the cause of the decline.'

or race.

...

Read in the light of recent events, which we fancy have influenced Miss Armstrong more than she is perhaps herself aware, her exposition of the decline of the English power in Ireland possesses considerable interest; but we are afraid it leaves the problem unsolved. It is a favourite doctrine with certain writers that the betrayal of the loyal element in Ireland, by the concession of the Free State, was wrong in principle and has been productive of much mischief. Few of us can feel enamoured of the Free State. It is merely a pis aller and, as such, is not acceptable to Ulster. Englishmen, however, are tired of the eternal Irish question. The crux of the problem, both in modern and mediæval times, is that the King's lieges have always been a minority, dependent on England for their existence, in a

med

into

W&S

hole

tit

uss

rly

we

the

nd

ult

ولد

re

nd

is

d

1.

hostile land. Miss Armstrong would have us to believe that this minority, favourable to English rule in the 13th century, might have grown to be a majority. We think she is mistaken. We hold, on the contrary, that there has always been a majority of Irishmen opposed to English rule. Had it not been so; had Irishmen been so enamoured of British law and order, as Miss Armstrong imagines, there would have been no necessity for constantly importing loyal Englishmen. And so we are brought round once more to the view that the attempt to rule Ireland from England was bound to fail. The result might have been different had the policy foreshadowed in the appointment of Edward I as Dominus Hiberniæ, but 'so that the land of Ireland shall never be separated from the Crown of England,' been given a trial.

ROBERT DUNLOP.

Art. 13. THE TASK OF THE GOVERNMENT.

It is now nearly a hundred years since the fates of ministries began to be settled by the plebiscite of a General Election, in which a very numerous body of electors takes part, and not, in the main, by a change in the opinions or the interests of a few scores of boroughmongers. In the ninety-three years which have passed since the Reform Bill of 1832 came into operation, there have been only two occasions on which a ministry entered into office with such an overwhelming majority at its disposal in the House of Commons that it might feel certain, not only of its ability to carry out its policy without any fear of checks or hindrances, but also of such a complete mandate from the nation that any opposition to it would savour of factiousness and resistance to the popular will. The first of these occasions was in the first Reform Parliament, when Lord Grey found that, for most purposes, he could count on the support of 453 Whigs, Liberals, and Radicals, to crush down any protest on the part of 167 Conservatives and 38 Irish 'Repealers.' Such a party preponderance, on the scale of more than two to one, was not to be seen again till 1924. Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone, and Disraeli enjoyed in their lucky days the possession of very handsome 'working majorities.' Lord Salisbury, in 1886, and Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman in the autumn of 1905, obtained such success at the polls that they could count on a superiority of about 100 on any crucial division, against all possible combination of opposition factions, allied for some fleeting moment. The Coalition Ministry of Mr Lloyd George cannot be taken into comparison with the others, since it did not represent a party with a party policy, but (as was presently apparent) two separate parties with incompatible views, unnaturally linked for a few years in an attempt to find some common scheme for tiding over the manifold difficulties of reconstruction' after the awful years 1914-18. Its majority was not representative of anything save of a general aspiration for unity on the part of a war-worn electorate, which believed for a space that it was possible in peace to continue the abnormal alliance of men with diametrically opposed ideas on social, imperial, and economic

= of

-f &

- of

in

gh

sed

ere

try

ity

ht

cy

of

00.

ce

in

nd

rt

1

questions. Hence the enormous majorities, secured on certain occasions for measures which the Coalition Government imposed on unwilling followers, must not be compared with party majorities in the days of Gladstone or Disraeli. Who will now assert, for example, that the majority obtained for Mr Montagu's India Bill was the result of a reasoned and enthusiastic acquiescence in its principles by the Conservatives who voted for it?

Now, in January 1925, we are confronted with a phenomenon not seen since 1832. After a bitterly-fought general election, one of the two old parties comes into office with a majority of more than two to one over the various fractions of the opposition. The total numbers of the House of Commons are not quite so large as they were in the 19th century, since 70 South Irish members no longer sit on its benches. But allowing for this change, Mr Baldwin, alone of all the successors of Lord Grey, can count on a preponderance of the same sort as that of the Liberals in the first Reform Parliament.

415 followers out of a House of 615: the Labour Party of to-day can only produce some 150 members-an even smaller figure than the 167 Conservatives of 1832: Mr Lloyd George's depleted group of 40 Liberals is hardly more numerous than the 38 Irish 'Repealers' who obeyed Daniel O'Connell. We have to reckon with a handful more of unclassable individuals, both in 1832 and in 1924, concerning whose votes on any particular question it would be unsafe to make calculations. But they were in Lord Grey's time, and they are in Mr Baldwin's, a negligible quantity. The important thing to realise is that the House of Commons which reassembles on Feb. 10 next shows such a complete predominance of one party as no political prophet ever expected to see again. It seems incredible to remember that last year many intelligent people were busying their brains with schemes of despair-plans how the governance of the realm could be carried on, in a period when it would be impossible that any of the three political parties should ever again have a clear majority. And it is certain that three months ago a widespread feeling prevailed that the general conditions of the old parliament would be perpetuated in the new, and that, even if the Conservatives were about to gain many seats, they would not