Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule

What did the good priest, Father O'Connor, say to all this; how express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege?

He "took no notice of the occurrence" – good, easy man. But I am forgetting something. Mr. Curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters, who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children, asked for the father's arms. Before the terrified boys and girls could comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks. The rest fled precipitately, but unhappily Curtin gave chase and was killed. Good Father O'Connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter, who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of Mr. Curtin, who did!

The Catholic Bishops of Ireland stood by and looked on all this without a word of censure. Silence gives consent. Had they fulminated against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for nearly all those I have cited were of this class; had they used their immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the law – had the Bishops done this, even the dull and sluggish brain of the brutal Saxon could have understood their action. They uttered no single word of condemnation. An eminent Catholic, a clever professional man, who reveres the faith in which he was bred, but holds its priesthood in lowest contempt, said to me: – "You cannot find a word of condemnation uttered by any Bishop during the whole period when brutal murders were of daily occurrence. I give you your best. I would stake anything on my statement. I have challenged people over and over again, but nobody has ever been able to produce a syllable of censure, of warning, of reprobation. The Bishops were strangely unanimous in their silence."

But when the Irish Masons try to provide for the orphans of their brethren the Archbishop's back is up at once; for Masons have secrets which they may not tell even to priests; and therefore Dr. Walsh declares that whosoever gives sixpence to this cause of charity, or associates with its promoters, shall be cast into hell, there to abide in torture everlastingly – unless previously whitewashed by himself in person. And as I have clearly shown, the influence of Archbishop Walsh and his kind is at this moment supremely powerful in matters affecting the prestige and integrity of England and her people. Wherefore I do not wonder at the saying of an earnest Irishman of famous name, a baronet of long descent, whom I saw yesterday —

"When I see how the thing is being worked, and when, as a Catholic, I recognise the progress and character of the Church policy, and when I see England walking so stupidly into the trap, I don't know what to do – whether to swear, or to go out and be sick."

Moycullen (Connemara), May 23rd.

No. 26. – THE CONNEMARA RAILWAY

Mr. Balfour's railway from Galway to Clifden will be exactly fifty miles long, and will run through Crooniffe, Moycullen, Ross, Oughterard, and the wildest and most desolate parts of Connemara. The line has been in contemplation for thirty years at least, but the strong suit of its Irish projectors was talking, not doing, and the project might have remained under discussion until the crack of doom but for Mr. Balfour's energy and administrative power. The Irish patriots had no money, or they would not invest any. The Galway authorities would not authorise a county rate. Anybody who chose might make the line, but the local "powers that be" refused to spend a single penny on an enterprise which would for years provide employment for the starving people of Connemara, and would afterwards prove of incalculable benefit to the whole West of Ireland by opening up an attractive, an immense, an almost inaccessible tourist district, besides affording facilities of transit for agricultural stock and general market produce, and powerfully aiding the rapidly-developing fish trade of the western sea-board. Not a bit of it. The Western Irish are always standing about waiting for something. They talked about the line for a generation or two, but they cut no sod of turf. They harangued meetings convened to hear the prospective blessings of the line, but they declined to put any money on their opinions. The starving peasants of Connemara might have turned cannibals and eaten each other before Irishmen had commenced the railway. The people of the congested districts were unable to live on the sympathy of their fellow-countrymen, and nothing else was offered to them. The Connemarans have an occasional weakness for food. They like a square feed now and again. Their instincts are somewhat material. They think that Pity without Relief is like Mustard without Beef. They like Sentiment – with something substantial at the back of it. Their patriot-brethren, those warm-hearted, dashing, off-hand, devil-may-care heroes of whom we read in Charles Lever, sometimes visited the district, to rouse the people against the brutal Saxon, but they did no more than this. Sometimes, I say, not often, did the patriots patrol Connemara. There were two reasons for this. First, the Irish patriots do not speak their native language; and the Connemarans are not at home with English. Secondly, and principally, the Connemarans had nothing to give away. They cannot pay for first-class patriotism like that of Davitt, Dillon, O'Brien, and Tim Healy, who latterly have never performed out of London.

And so the Galway folks went on with their railway discussions, and the poor Connemarans went on with their starving. Suddenly Mr. Balfour took the thing up, and the turf began to fly. The Midland and Western Railway Company, in consideration of a grant of £264,000, agreed to make the line, and to afterwards run it, whether it paid or not. The contractors were not allowed to import unskilled labour. The Connemarans were to make the line whether they knew the work or not. They had never seen navvy labour. They knew nothing outside the management of small farms. They had never done regular work. Their usual form is to plant their bit of ground and then to sit down till the crops come up, on which they live till next season. A failure of crops means starvation. This was their normal condition. They enjoyed what Mr. Gladstone would call a "chronic plethora" of hunger. The liverish tourist who adventured himself into these barbarous regions in hopeless quest of appetite for his breakfast, would see the Connemarans in hopeless quest of breakfast for their appetites. The region is healthy enough. As Justice Shallow would say, "Beggars all, beggars all. Marry, good air."

The first thing you see is a twenty-thousand-pound bridge across the Corrib, not very far from the salmon weir, where are more fish than you can count splashing up the salmon stairs, which are arranged to save the salmon the effort of a long jump. Then the line running along the Corrib Valley on a high embankment, past the ruins of what was first a convent, then a whiskey distillery, now a timekeeper's office. An entire field is being dug up and carted away, the soil being excavated to a depth of eight or ten feet, over an area of several acres required for sidings and railway buildings. A strolling Galway man of Home Rule tendencies imparts information. He is eminently discontented, and thinks the way in which the work is conducted another injustice to Ireland. "The people are working and getting wages, but what wages! Thirteen and sixpence a week! Would English navvies work for that? You are getting the labour at starvation prices, and even then you bully the men. They work in gangs, each with a ganger swearing at them in the most offensive and outrageous way. See that gang over there. You can hear the ganger shouting and swearing even at this distance. The poor men are treated like dogs, and even then they can hardly keep body and soul together. They have to come miles and miles to the work, and some live so far away that they can only return home once a week. So they have to camp out in hovels. You are going down the line? Then you will be shocked at the slave-driving you'll see. It reminds me of Legree in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' I am surprised that the men do not drop dead over the work. Not a moment's rest or relaxation. Work, work, work from morning to night, for next to nothing. It ought not to be allowed in a civilised country. And on the top of all this slavery we are expected to be very much obliged for the opportunity of working at all. You chuck us a crust just as you would chuck a bone to a dog, and then you want us to go down on our knees and pour blessings on Balfour's head. We're tired of such stuff; but, thank God, we shall soon have things in our own hands. All these men are small farmers, or small farmers' sons. They can't get a living out of the land, and they are obliged to come to this. Bullied and driven from week's end to week's end, they are the very picture of starvation. A shame and disgrace to the English Government."

I may as well say at once that all this proved to be untrue. No doubt the Galway Home Rulers invent and circulate these falsehoods to discount the effect of the good work of a Conservative Government, and it is, therefore, well that the facts should be placed on record. I pushed on to a cutting where fifty men were busily engaged in loading earth into trucks, having first dug it from a great bank of gravelly soil. An Irish ganger walked to and fro along the top, keeping his eye on the men, and occasionally shouting in an excited tone. But he was not swearing at, or otherwise abusing, the men, who were as fine a company of peasants as you could see anywhere, well-built, well-grown, and muscular. Not a trace of starvation, but, on the contrary, a well-fed, well-nourished look. The ganger, Sullivan, seemed good-tempered enough, only shouting to let off his superfluous vitality. He used no bad language. "Cheer up, my lads," he cried. "In wid the dirt. Look alive, look alive, look alive. Whirroo! Shove it up, my lads, shove it up. Away ye go. Look out for that fall of earth. There she goes. Whirroo!" English navvies would have preferred silence, would have requested him to hold his condemned jaw, would have spent some breath in applying an explosive mining term to his eyes, but these Irish labourers seemed to understand their superior officer, and to cheerfully accept the situation. Mr. Sullivan was civil and good-humoured. "These are a picked lot. Splendid set of fellows, and good workers. No, they do not walk for miles before they reach their work. The engine runs along the line to pick them up in the morning, and to drop them again in the evening. They have half-an-hour for dinner, and half-an-hour for tea. They get about fifteen shillings a week. Boys get less, but thirteen shillings and sixpence is the very bottom. Rubbish about low wages. Nine bob a week is the regular farmer's wage, and these men would have been glad to work for six bob. All have some land, every man of them. They have just come back from planting it. We have been very short of men. They went away at the beginning of April, and they were away for a fortnight or three weeks. Small blame to them. Half or three-quarters of them went to look after their bits of ground. But, barrin' that, they turn up very regularly. They get fifteen shillings a week, where they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle. Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse me, Sir.) Whirroo, my boys. Look out! In wid it, thin! Whirroo!"

A big tank for engine water was being filled by an old man in shirt and trousers, his naked chest shining a hundred yards away. Luke Whelan was his name; a vigorous pumper, he. "'Tis hard work it is, ye may say it. I have another tank or two to fill, an' keep filled, but I have long rests, and time for a grain o' baccy, glory be to God! Thirteen-an'-sixpence it is, but I lost my place at Palmer's flour mills, the work gave out, an' but for this I'd have nothin' at all. Was in the Fifth Fusiliers, but lost me sight (partly) in Injee. Was in the army long enough to get a pension of ninepence a day. Me rint is two pounds a year, and I've only the owld woman to kape. Ah, but Balfour was a blessin' to us altogether! They talk about Home Rule, but what good will that do us? Can we ate it, can we dhrink it, can we shmoke it? The small farmers thinks they'll have the land for nothin', but what about the labourers? Everything that's done is done for the farmers, an' the workin' men gets nothin' at all. In England 'tis the workin' men gets all the consideration; but in this counthry 'tis the farmers, an' the workin' men that have no land may hang themselves. When the big farms is all done away who'll employ the labourers? The gintry that spint money an' made things a bit better is all driven out of the counthry by the Land League. Ye see all around ye the chimneys of places that once was bits of manufactories. All tumblin' down, all tumblin' down. Nobody dares invest money for fear he'd be robbed of his property, the same as the landlords was robbed, an' will be robbed, till the end of the chapther. 'Tis nothin' but robbery ye hear of, an' gettin' other people's property for nothin'. The Home Rule Bill would dhrive all the workin' men out of the counthry to England and America. They must have employment, an' they must go where it is to be had. Engineers have been threatenin' this line for forty years, first one route an' then another, but divil a spade was put in it. England found us the money to build the line, an' the labourers get work. Where will we get work whin nobody would lend us money to build lines? An Irish Parlimint wouldn't build a line in a thousand years. For nobody would thrust thim wid the cash. Yes, wid ninepence a day and thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, I'm comfortable enough. But begorra, the pump leaks, an' I have to pump a quarther more than I should. Av the pump worked right 'tis little grumblin' ye'd hear from Luke Whelan."

Mr. George William Wood, contractors' agent, said: – "The men work as well as they can, but they do not get over the ground like English navvies. They are very regular, very quiet, very sober, and never give the least trouble. Of course, they had to be taught, and they did not like the big navvy shovels. They were used to the six-foot spades with no cross-bar. Yes, you might think it harder work with such tools, but then the Irish labourer dislikes to bend his back. The long handle lets him keep his back straight, there's the difference. However, we insist on the big, short shovels, and they have taken to them all right. These men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not worth nearly so much as English navvies. They may be willing, but they have not the same stamina. The English navvy eats about two pounds of beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale. These men never see meat from one year's end to another. They live on potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. At three in the afternoon they are not worth much, clean pumped out – might almost as well go home. No, they don't live in hovels. Those who go home but once a week are housed in good wooden sheds, or corrugated iron buildings, with good beds and bedclothes. There are about forty of them in a hut, with a hut-keeper to look after them and to keep order. For this excellent lodging they are charged sixpence a week, and all their prog is supplied at wholesale prices. We buy largely in Dublin, bring it down, of course, carriage free, and both the men and their wives and families are supplied to any amount. They effect a saving of at least twenty per cent., but probably much more, as village stores are terribly dear. The whole district has found out this advantage, and they flock to the hut-store from all parts. So Balfour is a boon to the country at large."

Next day I went down sixteen miles of line to a spot about a mile from Oughterard. It was pay-day, and I clung to the engine along with the engineer, Mr. Wood, and a pay-clerk, armed with several yards of pay-sheet, and a couple of black tin cash-boxes. A wild and stony country, a range of high mountains on the left, wide, flat plains on the right, through which the Corrib serpentined, with big rocks rising from the channel brilliantly white. "They whitewash the rocks, so that they can be seen by the boats and the Cong steamer. Englishmen would blow them up and have done with them, but Irishmen prefer to whitewash them and sail round them. More exciting I suppose, matter of taste." This from the engineer, a Saxon of the usual type. On through bogs, past nameless lakes, and a chaos of limestone rocks and huge granite boulders, lakes, bogs, rocks, in endless succession, with the long mountain reek beside us, and a still higher range in the purple distance. Now and then a green patch sternly walled in, a few cows grazing, a lonely donkey, a few long-tailed black sheep, or a couple of goats. Here and there acres of white blossom, looking like a snowfall. This was the bog bean, growing on a stem a foot high, a silvery tuft of silky bloom hanging downward, two inches long and the bigness of a finger. Sometimes we dashed past walled enclosures so full of stone that they looked like abandoned graveyards, and the only use of the fences, so far as I could see, was to keep thoughtless cattle out. Very little tillage. Just a few ridges of potatoes, but the people who had planted them seemed to have vanished for ever. At long intervals a diminutive white cot, but nothing else to break the succession of lake, rock, and bog. Moycullen, six miles from Galway, is to have a station; another will be built at Ross, ten miles, a third at Oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. Not a stone laid as yet. At Ross a great excavation. The men had just laid bare a huge boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot. "No granite in situ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line I saw was fenced with a Galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and eighteen inches thick. "The men build stone walls with great skill," said Mr. Wood, "but half the number of English navvies would do more excavating."

The pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came forward for their money. All had the same well-nourished sturdy look, and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. They conversed in Irish, but they mostly understood English, even if they could not speak it themselves. Whole villages were there seemingly of the same name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. There was John Toole and John Toole Pat, John Pat Toole and Pat Toole John. Permutation was the order of the day. There was Tom Joyce Pat and Pat Tom Joyce, Tom Joyce Sally and Tom Joyce boy. Besides this change ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat. This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in 1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden, inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity.

In Oughterard I met an American tourist who said, "I should think Home Rule would about settle Old England. The Irish people show a most unfriendly spirit, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no such word as gratitude in the Irish language. There is some change in this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the agitators have been everything is going to the bad. Nothing but distrust and suspicion. No Irishman would invest in Irish securities. They prefer South Americans! That startled me. I am told that Tim Healy is worth £30,000, all got out of Home Rule, and my informant says that Tim would not risk a penny in his own country. Tim is a blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mighty cute, and shirks Irish securities. Where are the business managers of the Irish nation coming from? That's what I want to know."

I told him of the Galway Harbour Commissioners, who, having been forgiven a Government debt of nearly £10,000, conceived the idea of building a new, grand, splindid, iligant, deep dock, which should increase the trade of the place by allowing ships of great draught to unload in the harbour. Let me repeat the story for the readers of the Gazette.

The Harbour Board consulted an eminent engineer, who said the right thing would cost £80,000. They sent him to the right about, and called in another man. "Now," said they, "we can only raise £30,000 by loans from the Board of Works. Will not that suffice? We give you 5 per cent. on the outlay, &c., &c., &c." The new man said £30,000 was ample, took the job, and the work was commenced. Ultimately they borrowed £40,000, which they spent, along with the £10,000 in hand. Then it was found that big ships could not get to the dock at all! No use in a deep dock unless you can swim up to it. To get the big vessels in you required to hoist them out of the water, carry them a few hundred yards, and drop them into the dock. As the Galway men still groan beneath the cruel English yoke, this operation was found impracticable. During some blasting operations a big rock was tumbled out of the dock in process of manufacture, dropping in front of another dock in full working order. The stone was just in the way of the vessels, but as there was no Parliament in College Green, the Harbour Board had not the heart to fish it up. So it crashed through the bottom of a Henderson collier, the owner of which sued the Harbour Board for damages, and was awarded a thousand pounds. The money never was paid, and never will be. The fortunate winner of the suit will sell his claim for £5 in English gold. He was thought to have done well in winning, and my informant, a typical Irishman, admired the complainant's successful attack on the Harbour Board. "But what good come of it at last," I ventured to put in. "Nay, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a glorious victory."

The Galway Harbour Board spent £50,000 or so on a deep dock which they have not got, and the harbour is in pawn to the Board of Works, which collects the tolls, and otherwise endeavours to indemnify itself. The Harbour Board meets as usual, but it has no powers, no money, no credit, no anything. This is a fair specimen of the business management which characterises the breed of Irishmen who favour Home Rule. The party paper, once a fine property, has in their hands sunk below zero, and they built New Tipperary on land to which they had no title; so that the money was completely thrown away. Almost every Board of Guardians in the country is insolvent, except in those cases where the Government has kicked out the Poor Law Guardians elected by the Parish, and restored solvency by sending down paid men to run the concern for a couple of years. This has been done in several instances, and in every case the paid men, drawing salaries of several hundred a year, have in two years paid off debts, leaving all in good working order, with a balance in the bank. The inference is obvious. Would the Belfast folks have made such a fiasco of a dock? Would Englishmen have exposed themselves to the ridicule of a story which is curiously remindful of Robinson Crusoe and his big canoe? Would the Galway folks ever have built the railway they wanted so badly; or sans England and Mr. Balfour, would not the Connemara men have proceeded to starve until the end of time? A keen old railway man who had thravelled, and who had done railway work in California, said to me, "Whin we get an Oirish Parlimint the labourers may jist put on their hats and go over to England. Thank God, we'll know something besides farm work now, the whole of us. We can get railroad work in England. There'll be none in Oireland, for every mother's son that has money will cut the country. I could take ye fourteen Oirish miles from Galway, along a road that was spotted wid great jintlemen's houses, an' ivery one of thim's in ruins. The owners that used to live in them, and be a blessin' to the counthry, is all ruined by the land agitation. All are gone, an' their foin, splindid houses tumblin' down, an' the people worse off than iver. If the Bill becomes law the young men will all be off to England and America. There'll be no work, no money in the counthry. Did ye hear what the cyar-dhriver said to Mr. Morley?"