That is all I propose to say on the subject of the Governor-General.
About a year ago—I think it was on this Vote—the President of the Executive Council expressed a yearning to escape from the fever and fret of Irish politics to the seclusion of a South Sea Island. I did my best at the time to encourage that project. I even had the temerity to suggest that he should invite General O'Duffy to accompany him, a suggestion which he appeared to receive with favour, but so far as I am aware nothing has been done to realise the scheme. Bearing in mind, as I do, what a lot of trouble would have been saved to all of us if it had been carried out, my first complaint against the Department of the President of the Executive Council is that, like so many other Fianna Fáil statements and promises, that particular one has not been allowed to achieve fruition.
A few days ago Deputy Norton, speaking here in the Dáil, suggested that former members of the Centre Party were really estopped from any effective criticism of the President of the Executive Council because of the fact that they had refrained from voting against him on the occasion of his election to that office. That argument will not bear examination. Nobody played a more energetic part than the members of the Centre Party in attacking and exposing the fallacies and follies of the Fianna Fáil programme at the last election, and those of us who, in the previous election, stood as Independents took a similar line. When we refrained from actually voting against the election of the President, we made it perfectly plain that it was not because of any doubt in our minds as to the undesirability of the principles and policy for which he stood. We merely felt that after the decisive verdict—however obtained—which had, in fact, been given by the people of the country for the President and his Party, it would be an empty show to object to his taking over the office of President of the Executive Council. Whether we were right or wrong in that point of view, and something can be said on both sides, at any rate, it is one which in no way debars us from continuing the criticism of his general policy which we were in the habit of making before his election occurred at all. I propose, therefore, to-day to take a brief survey of the general point of view for which the President of the Executive Council in particular stands.
To all the remonstrances which we urge in regard to the economic and moral deterioration of the country under the Fianna Fáil régime, the President is in the habit of replying: "Oh, but think of the national position. It is all very well to criticise us, but what have you to suggest except the surrender of the national position?" That being so, it seems incumbent upon us to consider a little more attentively just what that national position is which is regarded as imposing upon us such an obligation of reverence.
I take it that the President represents himself to the people of this country, to his followers in Parliament, and, perhaps, to himself, as conducting a fight against Great Britain—a fight with a double object; firstly, the object of retaining in this country certain moneys which have been in dispute and, secondly, the object of establishing a Republic, of obtaining what he calls complete independence. Now I suggest that, when both those campaigns are examined, they will hardly be found to be sufficiently inspiring to justify any great sacrifices being made for them. It is really doing the President a service to talk of the state of things existing between ourselves and Great Britain as an economic war. I suppose we have to go on doing it, because neither the English language nor possibly any other language provides a vocabulary which is adequate to describe the peculiarity of the situation existing between ourselves and Great Britain. We are supposed to be conducting a financial fight with her; we are supposed to be refusing to pay moneys which we say are not due, and yet not alone does the Minister for Finance continue to place a considerable portion of the nation's money in British securities, in securities of the nation whom by definition we are trying to destroy, but in addition to that —much as he has shown that he does not desire to hear it—the President is, in fact, paying out hand over first the moneys which are in dispute. He maintains that there is a tremendous distinction between paying something and having it taken from you. If there is such a distinction I hardly think it applies in the present case, because it is difficult to imagine anything more voluntary and more deliberate than the form of payment which the President is in fact making. We are under no obligation to send our livestock to Great Britain. We choose to do it because it suits us. We choose to do it knowing that in the act of doing it we are paying those moneys. In a recent diplomatic triumph the President arranged not only that we should send more beasts to England than we had been sending before that arrangement was made, but that we should coax the English to let us send those beasts and to let us make those extra payments of money in the shape of tariffs, by granting them a monopoly in our market for the supply of coal. Could anything be more fantastic if the fight on the subject of finance could really be described as a genuine fight at all? It is not a genuine fight. It has got every possible mark of a sham fight, and it is absurd to suggest to the people of this country that there is something so glorious about that state of affairs that they have no excuse for objecting to the sacrifice of their fortunes and the fortunes of their children in order to prolong it indefinitely.
Deputy McGilligan suggested in the Budget debate that the crux of the situation on the financial side as between us and Great Britain was the unwillingness of our Government to appoint two representatives to negotiate with two English representatives. I am not sure that Deputy McGilligan is right in that, but I think, in view of the fact that the statement has been made, that the President ought to tell us whether he is or not. My own impression is that, assuming two representatives were appointed on each side, they would be able to achieve nothing unless there was some change of heart on the part of our Government. It is impossible to say things on this subject that have not in some form or other been said already, but I think it has to be repeated that no settlement of the financial dispute with Great Britain, even assuming that it can be altogether segregated from the political dispute, is conceivable unless the Government is prepared either to stop arguing about rights and wrongs and to try to cut the Gordian knot by making a cash offer, some sort of cash compromise, or else to go back to the original suggestion of arbitration. The President, judging by his speech a few days ago on the Budget, has given up the pretence that a fair arbitration could not be obtained unless a chairman was brought in from outside the British Commonwealth. What he now says is that an arbitration with a chairman chosen from inside the British Commonwealth would be a compromise of our national position. It is just as well that the country should be clear that a fair arbitration, assuming that it was not regarded as a compromise of our national position, could undoubtedly be obtained with a chairman drawn from inside the British Commonwealth.
The President can hardly be blind to that fact, in view of some of the visitors who have recently been here in Ireland from other parts of the Commonwealth. It must be very present to his mind that distinguished Irishmen exist in other parts of the Commonwealth who, if anything, would have a bias in favour of this country in the event of one of them being selected as Chairman of an arbitration board. Apropos of these visits, may I just say this. We heard a good deal of the amount of information and instruction about Irish affairs which the President imparted to our distinguished visitors. I am wondering whether he received any corresponding information and instruction. I am rather afraid that when it comes to the question of information and instruction the President is one of those who think that it is more blessed to give than to receive. But there certainly was information and instruction that it would have been valuable for the President to receive from such visitors as those to whom I refer. He could have learned from them that perpect freedom and perfect equality are compatible with acceptance of the Commonwealth position and of the emblem of the Crown; he could have learned from them that there is an affection for this country widespread through the Commonwealth countries and that if we could see our way to take up our position frankly and cordially on a level with the rest, not only would we be regarded as being as free and equal as they are, but we would be regarded as on a still higher plane, as one of the two great parent nations which were responsible for the foundation and the building up of that Commonwealth—and that in no spirit of Imperialism, if by Imperialism is meant the imposition on the weak of the will of the strong, the exploiting of the poor by the strong, but in a spirit of partnership, in the spirit of a kind of minor League of Nations (to use a simile that was once used by the President himself), a spirit of co-operation for the peace of the world and for the advantage of all those free and equal members of a free partnership, terminable at will at any time by any one of them. I hope some of these ideas may have been put before the President by people from overseas, and I hope that, if they were put before him, he will not close his mind to their value and importance.
To return to the question of our financial dispute with Great Britain, I put it to the Government that unless they are prepared to make a cash offer and to stop any further wrangling about the rights and wrongs of the matter or, alternatively, are prepared to accept an arbitration with a chairman drawn from somewhere inside the Commonwealth, the financial dispute seems likely to go on for ever. The provision of bounties, which the Minister for Finance described as transitory and exceptional, seems likely to go on for ever, and the paying of moneys away to England on a scale certainly not smaller than before the dispute arose, seems likely to go on for ever. The President and his colleagues should really try to stop flogging themselves into a rage by a recollection of what they consider the misdeeds of a previous Government. They talk as if Deputy Cosgrave, when he was President of the Executive Council, agreed to pay away large sums of money to England without a vestige of a legal excuse for so doing. That sort of talk simply will not hold water. I am not going to argue the legal case here. I am not going to say that the Government have no legal case, but I do say that, putting it at its highest from their point of view, it is a legal question of difficulty and complexity. The fact that, in his correspondence with the President of the Executive Council, Mr. Thomas relies, not on the legal point, but on the agreement which was made with the Cosgrave Government, does not in the least suggest that the English are under the impression that their legal case is weak. It merely suggests that the natural and primary thing for them to rely on was an inter-Governmental agreement. Similarly, there is nothing at all sinister in the fact that when Deputy Cosgrave and his colleagues have sought to justify their action in agreeing to pay over the annuities and the other moneys, they did so by referring to the legal side of the case, because they were in the position of having to justify that agreement. The British were not in the position of having to justify that agreement. They could rely on the agreement without justifying it. The Cosgrave Government had to justify it, and the talk of their making a better case for Mr. Thomas than Mr. Thomas was able to do for himself, is merely nonsense and, in so far as it has the effect of inflaming the minds of the Government and making them more adverse to a settlement it has been mischievous nonsense.
The President affects to be at all times suspicious that we are laying traps for him and that our one desire is to discredit the Government in the eyes of the people of the country and get them out of office. I wish we could get these ideas out of his head. I believe there has never been an Opposition in any country with less greed for office than the present Opposition in the Dáil. We honestly are not interested in that subject. If the present Government would see the light, handle the affairs of the nation in a common-sense manner and frankly admit that changed circumstances have convinced them of truths they had not before realised, we would have no objection to seeing them continue in office indefinitely. I wish he would try to give us credit for being sincere in the recommendations we have made on the subject of these various disputes with Great Britain.
Now, to turn from the financial dispute to the other one—the supposed fight for a republic. It is very difficult to imagine how anybody in this country can still get up enthusiasm for the Fianna Fáil fight for a republic. I repeat, without fear of contradiction, that since they came into office they have not got one inch nearer to a 32-county republic. They confess themselves that it is futile to look forward to creating such a republic by force. They confess that, not only does it appear impracticable to subdue the North, but that if we did subdue the North we should continue, so long as the Northern Unionists formed part of our State, to have to contend against a condition of turmoil. If anything is to be done in the way of uniting this nation, it must be done by persuasion and by consent. I put it to every fair-minded Deputy in this House that the North has gone a good deal further away from us in sentiment since the present Government came into office. It appears to me that if only the Fianna Fáil Party had seen its way to accept the Commonwealth partnership three years ago, it is very possible that by this time we should be on the verge of national reunion. The amount of sentiment that has been excited by the Jubilee of the King would have given an extraordinary opportunity for reunion with the North.
The President is in the habit of saying that opinions such as these, coming from a person such as I, have no weight, that they would have weight if they came from Lord Craigavon or one of his colleagues in the North. When the President says a thing like that, he is speaking very unreasonably because there is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that the Northern Unionists have their minds inflamed and diseased by racial prejudices, and we cannot expect conciliation and reason from them until we have eliminated the conditions which have created the disease. I cannot quote any statement by individuals in the North that go to support the theories I am advancing, but I suggest that they are a matter of mere common sense. The objections in the old days on the part of Northerners to Home Rule were based on two grounds. They were based on the ground, in the first place, that Home Rule would be "Rome Rule" and, in the second place, on the ground that Home Rule would mean complete separation from the Commonwealth. As regards the first, their theories have been completely exploded. They meant, of course, that there would be religious intolerance in Southern Ireland, and nobody can contend that there has been anything of the kind. There is no country that is more tolerant on the subject of religion than the Irish Free State. Consequently, there remains nothing except the argument that self-government for Ireland means separation.
It is highly unstatesmanlike and utterly futile for us to shut our eyes to the fact that more than a quarter of the population of the country are passionately attached to that Commonwealth. We have to face precisely the same problem they had to face in South Africa. South Africa could not be made into a country until the Dutch and the British stock came together on the basis of complete self-government, complete freedom, complete equality, including the right to go out of the Commonwealth within the framework of the Commonwealth system, of which the symbol is the Crown. I see no reason to believe that what happened in South Africa could not happen here also. It is the same disease. If we have any real desire to reconcile the people of the North and to bring about a united country, South Africa has given us a headline as to how it should be done.
The President has often represented himself and his Party as standing for complete freedom, whereas, according to him, the Opposition stand for an Ireland continuing in bondage and liking, or pretending to like, that bondage. That presentation of the case is the very reverse of the truth. No member of the Opposition wishes Ireland to continue in bondage. Every member of the Opposition claims that Ireland has a right to decide for herself at all times whether it should belong to the Commonwealth or not. While we are in favour of the Commonwealth position, not merely on material grounds—though, God knows, the material grounds are important enough—but also, and, most of all, because we consider that the unity of Ireland is the thing that is best worth going for in Irish politics, at the same time we stand for the sovereignty and the complete freedom of the Irish nation. We believe that the Irish Free State is completely free now and we consider our problem, not as a problem of freedom, but a problem of reconciliation, a problem of making Ireland into a country by bringing together the two stocks that have inhabited it for so many centuries.
We are shortly going to have by-elections, and I am afraid that, therefore, the present moment is not an auspicious one for expecting an attitude of sweet reasonableness on the part of the Government. I am afraid that it is a moment when they are only too likely to beat the loudest drums they have to beat, but, beat as loud as they like, I somehow or other think they cannot put a very creditable complexion on what they describe as their national policy. It is certainly not apparent to me how they are making any progress towards what they say is their ideal. A few weeks ago the President said that he and his Party could only conceive of complete freedom for this country in terms of a republic. Why can they only conceive of it in terms of a republic? The phrase seems to me to be nonsense. But let us suppose that they mean what they say. Are they making any headway even towards a Twenty-Six County republic? Are they putting this country in a position where it will be able to stand the economic strains, which, the President says, it will have to stand in the event of a republic being established? Are they building up any reserve fund to meet those economic strains? It seems to me that, instead of a reserve fund being accumulated, everything and everybody is being taxed up to the limit, and the Government appear to be borrowing, indefensibly, for objects that ought not to be borrowed for. Instead of building up, it seems to me that they are pulling down and that, so far from the country being put in a continually better position to resist the economic strains of complete separation, the country is being put into a worse position all the time.
If the President thinks in terms not of a Twenty-Six County republic but of a Thirty-Two County republic, what then? If the British market is important to us, what about the North? If we have to consider the British market for our agricultural produce, have not the North also to consider that market for their ships and for their linen as well as their agriculture; and is it not a fact that absolutely no progress is being made towards bringing about a state of affairs when this country as a whole, or even the Twenty-Six Counties, can afford the luxury of complete separation—even assuming, as I do, that the British would indulge in no retaliation if such a separation took place?
The President has suggested that we are not sincere in saying that this country is not free to leave the Commonwealth of Nations: that we would threaten people at election times with all sorts of pains and penalties if they did leave the Commonwealth. That attack on our sincerity is far from being justified. At the last two elections, I, personally, stumped the whole country saying that we were free to leave the Commonwealth if we wanted to do so, and that I stood for that position and, not alone that, but that I stood for membership of the British Commonwealth of Nations because I stood for that position. It suits the President's convenience to say that we are under compulsion to remain inside the Commonwealth: that we are in what the President calls a forced position. I cannot prevent the President from going on saying that if he wants to say it. Perhaps the President believes it himself—because I believe the President to be capable of a great deal of self-deception in such matters. Whether he believes it or not, however, he is not justified in saying that we believe it. We do not believe it. It has been made amply clear by statesmen in all parts of the Commonwealth that the Commonwealth could not continue to exist at all, in the light of the constitutional developments of recent years, but for the principle that each part of the Commonwealth has the right to secede if it wants to do so.
The President may suggest that, in our case, the Treaty stands in the way. Personally, I do not think that the Treaty does stand in the way. I think that the Treaty, interpreted in the light of recent constitutional developments and in the light of the Statute of Westminster, does not stand in the way. If, however, there was sufficient ambiguity as to whether the Treaty does stand in the way, I should be in favour of clearing that ambiguity up, and I imagine that all Parties in this country would concur in the desire to have it cleared up, if it needed to be done. However, it is not what the British say that matters, but what we ourselves feel and intend; and, so long as there is no subjection in our minds or spirit, I believe there is nothing that derogates from our dignity as a nation in accepting membership of the British Commonwealth. When we urge, as we do, acceptance of partnership in the Commonwealth and acceptance of the Crown as the lightest possible link that could be imagined for maintaining that partnership, we do so, not as bondsmen ourselves, nor as men wishing to impose bonds on others, but as freemen, as lovers of liberty, lovers of freedom, and lovers of equality. The President argues that there is something incompatible with our history and tradition in such acceptance. It might as easily be urged that it is incompatible with English History and tradition. In fact it might more easily be urged in the case of the English people. They have been commonly attacked for Imperialism in the past; for refusing to give freedom to other peoples. In the minds of many English people, as a matter of fact, the Statute of Westminster seemed to be a break with English tradition and history, but none the less it has been accepted.
New times and new circumstances give rise to new ideas, and there is no reason why our ideas and our minds should not take account of changed circumstances. The President talks as if the history of this country dated from 1916 and as if the only general election that mattered was the general election of 1918. I cannot understand the logic of such talk. Were there not sufficient circumstances of exasperation at the time to make that general election a rather exceptional and abnormal election? I would remind the House that the financial agreements, which the Government is so fond of attacking, between the Cosgrave Government and the British Government, were an issue in the two general elections of 1927. The people of the country certainly knew the effect of these agreements at the time. Yet, the Fianna Fáil Party does not consider itself debarred from going back on those decisions. Why should the 1918 election be the one election in Irish history that counts?
The fact of the matter is, taking Irish history as a whole, that the republicans amongst Irish Nationalists have been in a minority, a very decided minority, a minority of quantity and quality. I have given a list of names in this House before to prove that and I do not intend to bother the House with these names again. But I repeat that assertion that both in quality and quantity we can show a better list of non-republican Irish nationalists than of republican Irish nationalists up to 1916. Conscription, the Curragh Mutiny just before the war and the special circumstances of the Ulster campaign against Home Rule happened to create a feeling of special exasperation in this country. For some of that we ourselves were partly to blame. The British were not solely to blame. The Ulster threat of rebellion would never have reached the importance that it did reach but for our own representatives at the time. I was a supporter of the Irish Nationalist Party, but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that, owing to the prejudice in this country against anything like coercion, the Irish Nationalist Party put every obstacle in the way of the Liberal Government of that day taking any effective steps to nip that Ulster movement in the bud. So that for that the English were not solely responsible. But I quite agree that there was a concentration of circumstances calculated to produce intense exasperation in this country during the years from 1910 to 1918. That exasperation led to extremism and that extremism took the form of republicanism. But in those days no alternative was presented to the people such as is presented to them now. It is not certain that even in those days of exasperation such an alternative as is presented to them now would not have been accepted. But now, after all, the exasperation has passed and no excuse remains to us for not thinking over these matters tranquilly and calmly. Surely we should not consider ourselves debarred from looking into these questions on their merits because of the general election that took place in 1918. I appeal to the Government to reflect on them with less prejudice than they have hitherto imported into their reflections. I appeal to them to believe that we, on this side, are not preoccupied with trying to dish them or trying to discredit them in the eyes of the country. What we are preoccupied with is the happiness, prosperity, peace and dignity of our people. If we are advocating, as we do, a perfectly frank and manly acceptance of the Commonwealth position, we do it for these reasons and not for any less worthy reasons.
