Scientists against home rule

In 1887, in the middle of the crisis provoked by Gladstone’s home rule proposal of 1886, John Tyndall (1820-93), professor of natural philosophy and superintendent of the Royal Institution, London, wrote to Thomas Henry Huxley to organise a memorandum criticising Gladstone to be signed by the members of the Royal Society. ¹ He solicited ‘a brief expression of opinion on the part of our leading scientists to strengthen the hand and increase the courage of the Government’. Although Tyndall and Huxley believed the majority of the Royal Society were anti-home rule, the proposed memorandum never materialised. Huxley agreed with Tyndall’s sentiments but, as ever the politician, he warned him about the reluctance of scientists to be drawn into political controversy and the dangers a memorandum might pose to the unity of the Royal Society. ² There was, therefore, no public expression of unionist sentiment on the part of the most prestigious institution of science in the United Kingdom in 1887. However, these were merely the opening shots in what was to be a long campaign against home rule among a significant section of scientific opinion in Britain and Ireland lasting through the introduction of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886, the second in 1893, the third in 1912 and the electoral victory of Sinn Féin in 1918.