COERCION OR CO-EQUALITY

New Zealand Tablet, 18 November 1920, Page 18

COERCION OR CO-EQUALITY

(By John Heron Lkpi>er, in the New Witness).

There is a saying of Mohammed, that empire existeth with infidelity hut not with tyranny by which he appears to ha\ meant that the conduct of a. sovereign towards all his subjects, no matter what their defects or schismatical blots, must be guided by higher considerations than those of policy alone. The true end of all government, undoubtodly, is to secure equal justice between man and man, and some inkling of this was apparent in the savage’s address to Cortez: “You have conquered us; if von are a merchant, you will trade in ns; it you are a butcher, you will slay ns; if you are a prince, you will make us happy.” At the moment these lines are being written the supreme authority ol the British .Empire, meaning thereby, the House of Commons, or rather, the managers of that docile assembly, is engaged in passing a bill, which in its essential provisions, will deprive four millon people of the benefit of those laws that from a very remote period of antiquity have-been considered the birthright of the nation as a. whole. In plain words, trial by jury is to be abolished in Ireland and trial by court-martial substituted. It is, of course, no new experiment to be tried in that country, having been pursued with great success there during the time of that renowned military commander, whose epitaph is still remembered by the descendants of those among whom his activities were manifested: 1 ‘Here lie the bones of Hepenstall. Judge, jury, gallows, rope and all.” As perhaps these lines may be new to some non-Irish readers, I hasten to add in explanation, that this holder of the King’s commission being by nature an uncommonly tall fellow was wont, after having tried and judged the delinquent rebel, to execute the sentence of the court by suspending him over his shoulder at the end of a rope till life was extinct. He is hardly likely, all the same to find modern emulators, even under the Act now being considered, since one of its clauses, as drafted, provides that in trying capital offences one member of the court, to be nominated hi/ the Tmrd tenant , need no t be an officer, and it has been suggested that, the natural person to fill this post will be the common hangman. The most fervent believer in coercion will hardly be rash enough to assert that the pioceedings of Hepenstall and company over a century ago had much effect in quieting unrest or promoting better feeling between the two islands; nor is it easy to see why similar measures nowadays should have happier results. The fact is. that the established courts are growing moth-eaten from lack of use, since the Irish either from natural cussedness or disconcerting ingenuity, have chosen to carry their disputes to other courts of arbitration, which, though they may be unrecognised by the law of the land, the law that once upon a time "did not presume a Papist to exist." still seem to give complete satisfaction to three-quarters of the people and have no difficulty in enforcing their sanctions without either police or standing army, major-generals, Lewis guns, tanks, or any other of the legal machinery of the nominal government. Thus the Irish are ignoring the rulers that exist dr jure and have set up others dr frulo. who have the terrific advantage of fulfilling I,incoin's famous phrase about the idea! type of government, by the people, for the people. All the kings horses and all the king's men cannot hinder the decrees of a popular government from meeting with popular support: and the converse of this proposition is too self-evident to require re-statement. - v There is no use in hoodwinking ourselves into not seeing that a revolution has taken place in Ireland —I only wish it had been a bloodless one—and the country is no longer prepared, hat in hand to render unto Caesar the things that Caesar has been demanding, and usually obtaining, for some considerable time past, though it is needless here to enter into old vexed questions as to whether various types of Pontius Pilate have done the world more good or harm during( the past two thousand years. The main point is this; three-quarters of Ireland says to Great Britain, “We do not intend that you shall govern us;” and the supreme authority replies, “We intend to go on governing you ; and what is morn, wo now intend tj> do' it by means we would never dare to employ in "England at present.” That is (where the sting comes in, and that is why, on further consideration, the moderate man, who hates violence and has had vague dreams of a happy bargain being struck between contending extremists," will begin to scratch his head and come back to realities, as realities begin to affect himself unpleasantly. I can imagine such

an Irishman taking thought unto himself something as follows: <= “1 have nothing against the English, for they’re a decent people anti a likeable sort when they’re minding their own business. But it’s more than a joke to have all these young cubs over here cutting up the roads with their traction engines and meddling with every one in the barony. I’ve something better, to do than keep my eyes skinned for every man in uniform that comes past, and there s Peter O’Grady gaoled in Clonmel for three months by sentence of court-martial for looking sideways «at Sec-ond-lieutenant Slasher. I used to be fond of a hand of cards with a neighbor in the evening, but now it’s as much as a man s life s worth to go out after dark, for if you’re not shot you’re court-martialled, and that’s much the same in the long run. Every day in life these courtsmartial are sending one man into exile and another to the gallows; and we never know what goes on behind their closed doors. The sooner the country’s rid of all these English , hi/ din/ means, the better it’ll bo for all of ns; and the man that’s out to get rid of them is the man for my money.”

Thus, if my estimate of the pyschologv of the moderate man be correct, the unpopularity of the king’s uniform would, in no very great space of time, become enormously increased. Burkes dictum, that yon cannot draw an indictment against a nation, has, of course, of late years found few supporters, hut it is likely henceforth to" find fewer still if nations are to be held responsible for the follies of their governors.

There is a. quotation from Swift that has been included in almost every Irish political pamphlet and book 1 have read for the past four years, and strangely enough, it has never been given in full. The clean wrote: ■‘Burn everything English except her coals and her people. The words italicised are those that have been missing in the polemical literature referred to, and while I have too just a knowledge of my own countrymen to imagine that the lacuna was created with malice aforethought, yet one can foresee bitterness increasing under shoddy legislation, such as this new Act, till it reaches such an extent as to make the text with these words omitted pass for the authorised version.

Xor does Swift need to rise from the grave to assure us. again that ten men well armed can subdue one man in his shirt; for, given the machinery contemplated in this Coercion Act, the history of Ireland for some time to come will probably supply enough executions, transportations and imprisonments to satisfy the most sentencethirsty reactionary that ever strained the quality of mercy as a Crown Prosecutor. But I venture to deny that England will be one ha’porth the better or securer for it all. The ultimate results will be quite the contrary. It is a horrible thing to be on bad terms with your next-door neighbor—it is also a dangerous thing. 1 wonder where we should have been during the late war if North’s

“resolute government” had succeeded in America during the eighteenth century. Well for ns that we did not enter the struggle clutching on to a discontented American colony that was biding its time for revenge, but could rely instead on an independent and benevolent ally. For my own part, I should prefer to have my backyard occupied, by a free and friendly neighbor rather than by a sulky and malevolent serf. So my alternative to the Coercion Act and to the farce that has been played in Ireland for the last two years Sans le i/ouvernement on nr rimif phis, said Mirabeau— be to borrow some statesmanship from the behaviour of one of our greater kings in dealing with the Geraldine: "Since all Ireland cannot rule this man, this man shall rule all Ireland.” But in this case the dependence of the British nation would not rest upon one man but on a representative body, to whom the supreme authority might say: “Since my standing army cannot rule you without ruinous expense to yourself, for goodness sake try your hand at ruling yourselves; you cannot make a worse hash of it than I have done for eight hundred" years. I want to bo rid of the trouble of looking after you. Please, look after yourselves in future. Understand, that, if you start comforting my enemies in any way, I can blow your coast towns to pieces with my fleet and your inland towns to smithereens with my aeroplanes. I am not in the least afraid of you, for I am ten times bigger than you.” And no doubt Ireland would reply: "Good-bye, and good luck go with you. Don’t meddle with ns, and we won’t meddle with you, except in the fair way of trade. And don’t be afraid that we’ll give any of your enemies a short cut into your house through ours. We have asked strangers in there before now, and lived to rue the day, so we mean to keep the door locked henceforth.”

Of course,- there isn’t the ghost of a chance of such a sensible and economical settlement being (reached.

Recognising that, and also that the Coercion Act will have been passed by the time this is in print, nothing remains but to glance at the probable effects of it in Ireland and here. In Ireland, where yon will have an arbitrary •■tribunal dealing with - , matters whereof it has no technical knowl- ( edge, one that is bound to be swayed by racial and class prejudice, yet by law made competent to decide cases and administer punishments without any respect for local conditions or knowledge of local idiosyncrasies, where you will' have such a phenomenon, I say, you will also have every man worthy of his nationality opposing it by every means known to a Brutus or a Paiafox. And what of the result in Great Britain? Well, the same arguments which warrant a parliament in passing such a bill for Ireland will also hold good when shouting necessity, the tyrant's plea, demands the passing of just such another act to curb undesirable demonstrations in Clydebank or Tony Bandy.