Introduction. Albert Venn Dicey (1835–1922), was born near Lutterworth, Leicestershire, England. The British jurists’ treatise Lectures Introductory to the Study of the Law of the Constitution is considered part of the British Constitution, which is a combination of several written and unwritten authorities. Gladstone described the work in Parliament as a recognised authority. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Dicey became a fellow of Trinity College in 1860. Called to the Bar in 1863, Dicey had combined a legal career with political journalism during the 1860s and 1870s. Dicey taught law at the University of Oxford (1882–1909) where he was appointed Vinerian Professor of English Law. He was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and served as principal of the Working Men’s College, London (1899–1912). Dicey was amongst the first academics at the London School of Economics, lecturing from 1896–99 and contributing to the school’s intellectual development in its formative years.
He played a leading part in political controversy, and, between 1886 and 1913 he wrote four books opposing Home Rule in Ireland. His scholarly work was cited in Parliament in the Irish Home Rule question during the 1880s. His analysis was highly influential in shaping subsequent perceptions of the century’s political development, and his work marked English political language before 1914. Dicey’s intellectual reputation was at its peak in his own lifetime but has since declined somewhat. The imperial theorist Dicey, in resisting Home rule arguments, observed that “English colonialism works well enough” in Ireland. In this document, he questions whether Home Rule would offer the true independence sought by nationalists. He compares an Ireland with Home Rule to some of England’s other dependent colonies. He states that a true nationalist should not be satisfied with just Home Rule.
Source. A. V. Dicey, England’s Case Against Home Rule (London 1886).
The very reasons which make English reformers favour the extension of local self-government in Ireland prove that local self-government, whatever its merits, is no substitute for Parliamentary independence. Englishmen recommend local self-government because it does not check the authority of the Imperial Parliament. Home Rulers desire Home Rule because it does check imperial legislation. Brandy is good, and water is good; but when a neighbour asks for a glass of spirits, it is mockery to tender a glass of water on the ground that both spirits and water are drink. The benevolent person who makes the offer must not wonder if he receives no thanks.
Home Rule does not mean National Independence. This proposition needs no elaboration. Any plan of Home Rule whatever implies that there are spheres of national life in which Ireland is not to act with the freedom of an independent state. Mr. Parnell and his followers accept in principle Mr Gladstone’s proposals, and therefore are willing to accept for Ireland restrictions on her political liberty absolutely inconsistent with the principle of nationality. Under the Gladstonian constitution her foreign policy is to be wholly regulated by a British Parliament in which sit no Irish representatives; she is not to have the right either of raising an army or of endowing a Church; she is in fact to surrender any claim to the rights of a nation in consideration of receiving a certain number of state-rights. In all this there is nothing unreasonable and nothing blameworthy. One part of the United Kingdom is prepared to accept new terms of partnership. But this acceptance, though reasonable and fair enough, is quite inconsistent with any claim for national independence. A nation is one thing, a state forming part of a federation is quite another. To ask for the position of a dependent colony like Victoria, or of a province such as Ontario, is to renounce the demand to be a nation.
A bonâ fide Home Ruler cannot be a bonâ fide Nationalist. This point deserves attention, not for the sake of the miserable and ruinous advantage which is obtained by taunting an adversary in controversy with inconsistency till you drive him to prove his logical position by increasing the exactingness of his demands, but because the advocates of Home Rule (honestly enough, no doubt) confuse the matter under discussion by a strange kind of intellectual shuffle. When they wish to minimise the sacrifice to England of establishing a Parliament in Ireland, they bring Home Rule down nearly to the proportions of local self-government; when they wish to maximise—if the word may be allowed—the blessing to Ireland of a separate legislature, they all but identify Home Rule with National Independence. Yet you have no more right to expect from any form of state-rights the new life which sometimes is roused among a people by the spirit and the responsibilities of becoming a nation, than you have to suppose municipal councils will satisfy the feeling which demand an Irish Parliament.
Tomás O’Riordan