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

"It is true that Ireland is described in the map made by Englishmen as one of the British Isles, but it is not so written in the true Irishman's heart, and never will be, in spite of the toadyism of gentlemen like the Town Commissioners of Mullingar."

This pronouncement embodies the sentiments of every Nationalist Irishman. The Union of Hearts is not expected to succeed the Home Rule, or any other bill, and to do Irishmen justice, they never use the phrase, neither do they profess to look forward to friendliness with England. I have conversed with hundreds of Home Rulers, and all looked upon the bill as a means of paying off old scores. The tone of the Nationalist press should be enough for sensible Englishmen. Nobody who regularly reads the leading Irish Separatist papers can ever believe in the friendship supposed to be the inevitable result of the proposed concession. Once the present agitation is crowned with success, a tenfold more powerful agitation will at once arise. The Irish people will have more grievances than ever. Already they are complaining of insult and betrayal. And their reproaches are directed against the G.O.M. and his accomplices, or rather against Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, for they know as well as Englishmen know that the rest count for nothing; that, in fact, they resemble the faithful and unsophisticated baa-baa of whom we heard in our early infancy. "Mary had a little lamb, Whose fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go." This is the attitude of the English Gladstonian party, and the Irish people know it. A Home Ruler I met to-day disavowed loyalty except to Ireland, and asked what was the Queen and the rest of the British Royal pauper party to him or to Ireland that he should be loyal? He said: —

"All interest is over here, whether among Nationalists or Unionist. The fate of the bill affects us no longer. The new financial proposals are the last straw that breaks the camel's back. Where is the managing of our own affairs? Where does the Nationalism come in? And Gladstone, in allowing himself to make in the first proposal a mistake of one thousand pounds a day, damaged his prestige as the framer of the bill, and fatally damaged the bill itself. Anybody can now say that if he was so grossly mistaken in an ascertainable matter like revenue and figures he stands to be equally wrong (at least) in matters which are not demonstrable, but which are at present only matters of opinion and argument. I am not sure that he ever intended to give us any Home Rule at all. We are being fooled because we have no leader. The bill, as it stood at first, would never have been prepared for a man like Parnell. Gladstone dare not have done it. The whole bill is a series of insults. As a reasonable, fair-minded man you will not deny that. It purports to come from friends who confide in us, and yet every line bristles with distrust and suspicion. There is not one spark of generosity in the whole thing from beginning to end. Better have no bill at all. For as a business man, I foresee that the passing of any such bill would lead to a complete upset of trade. We should have a most tremendous row. The safeguards would only invite to rebellion. Tell a man he must not have something, must not do something, and that is the very thing he wants to do. He might not have thought of it if you had not mentioned it; but the moment you point it out, and particularise the forbidden fruit, from that very moment he is inspired with a very particular wish for that above all things. So with a nation. We want our independence. We want to do as we like. Otherwise, why ask for a Parliament? Gladstone says, Yes, my pretty dear, it shall have its ickety-pickety Parliament; it shall have its plaything. And it shall ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy too; all round the parky-warky with the cock-a-doodle-doo. But it mustn't touch! Or if it touches it mustn't be rough, for its plaything will break so easily. We don't want this tomfoolery, nor to be treated like children. We want a real Parliament, and not one that can be pulled up every five minutes by London. For if the English Parliament have the power to veto our wishes, where's the difference? We might have just as well stayed as we were. That's perfectly clear.

"So that I for one will be glad when the farce is over. The present bill at best was but a fraud, a tampering with the national sentiment. And I am beginning to think that we have no chance of a National Legislature until the coming of the next great Irishman. I am not so disappointed or broken-hearted as you might suppose. For the prospect of an Irish Parliament under present auspices is not very enticing. The country might be made to look ridiculous, and the thing, by bursting up in some absurd way, might make a repetition of the attempt impossible for a century. I would rather wait for a better bill, and also for better men to work it. We are not proud of the Irish members. But we didn't want Tories, and all the propertied men are Tories. What were we to do? We know the want of standing and breeding which marks most of our men, but we did the best we could, and came within an ace of succeeding. Let me tell you the exact feeling of the respectable Home Rule party of Ireland at this moment.

"Having exerted ourselves with enthusiasm, and having undergone considerable pecuniary sacrifice with good chances of success, we now see clearly that all our efforts are for the present thrown away. It is the fortune of war. The fates were against us, and we rest content with the hope that we have furthered the ultimate success of the movement. For the moment, we make our bow, and hope to call on Mr. Bull at a more propitious season. Of course we expect to win in the end."

The next politician whose opinions I noted was a horse of quite a different colour. He bore a Scottish name, and had the incisive, argumentative style of the typical Ulsterman, who unites the cold common-sense and calculating power of the Scot with the warmth and impulse of the Irish nature. He said: —

"The bare existence of Belfast is, or should be, enough to negative all arguments in favour of Home Rule. The agitators say that Ireland is decaying from political causes, while all the while this Ulster town is getting richer and more powerful and influential. While the people of Cork are begging the Viceroy to please to do something for their port, to please to be so kind as to ask Mr. Bull to favour the city with his patronage, the Belfast people, with a far inferior harbour, an inferior climate, an incomparably inferior position, surrounded by far worse land, are knocking out the Clyde for shipbuilding, and running the Continent very close in linen-weaving. Belfast is actually the third in order of the Customs ports in the United Kingdom. The Belfast people flourish without Home Rule, and what is more, they know their neighbours. They've reckoned these gentry up.

"How is it that the Catholic population, as a rule, are merely the hewers of wood and drawers of water? They have precisely the same opportunities as their Protestant countrymen. Where-ever you go you will find the Protestants coming to the top. Cork is a very bigoted Catholic city, and the huge majority of the population are Catholics. How is it that most of the leading merchants are Protestants? Why do heretics flourish where the faithful starve? Transfer the populations of Cork to Belfast and vice versâ, and, as everybody knows perfectly well, Belfast would at once begin to decay, while Cork would at once begin to prosper. Therefore it is absurd to say that Home Rule would cure the poverty existing in Catholic districts. Yes, there is a party of ascendency. The Protestants are distinctly the party of ascendency. They have the ascendency which ability and education and industry will always have over incapacity and ignorance and laziness. Now, I know something about the linen trade, and also something about the growth and preparation of flax.

"Linen has made the North, and flax is grown in the North. But it would grow much better in the South. If they would grow it we would be very glad to buy it. But they won't. And why not? Because it needs care and skill, and a lot of watching and management. The beggars are too lazy to grow anything that wants tending from day to day. It would pay them splendidly, and the advantages of flax growing and dressing have over and over again been drummed into them without effect. The climate and soil of Southern Ireland are far more suitable for flax growing than the North, and as about three-quarters of all the flax woven in Belfast is grown on the Continent, it is clear that the market is waiting for the stuff. The Belfast merchants have done all that in them lay to bring about flax cultivation in the South. They have sent out lecturers and instructors, they have planted patches and grown the stuff, and shown the pecuniary results, and with what effect? Absolutely none. The people won't do anything their grandfathers didn't do. They won't be bothered with flax, which wants no end of attention. Why, if they grew flax, they'd have to work almost every day! And nobody who knows Irishmen, real Keltic Irishmen, ever expects them to do that, or anything like it. I've been in India, and I deliberately say that I prefer the Hindoo to the Southern Irishman for industry and reliability.

"These people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their condition to be improved by a Home Rule Parliament. Can anything be more unreasonable or more unlikely? And because there are more of them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be disregarded. Where is the English sense of the eternal fitness of things?

"What the Irish really seek is some effective substitute for work. They have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to them. Carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there. Ireland for the Irish is a favourite cry. Why? Is not England for the Irish, America, Australia, New Zealand? My ancestors came here in the time of Henry the Second, and I am told that I have no business in the country. Wherever English and Scots settlers have been located, there the country is well worked and the people are thriving. If we can thrive, why can't they thrive? If we can get on without Home Rule, why can't they get on without Home Rule? If it were going to be a good thing for the country we'd all be on it like a shot. If it were good for them, it ought to be good for us. We have shown by our success that our judgment is sound. Their failure in everything they undertake, their dirt, their general habits and character, should cause their statements and opinions to be looked upon with very great suspicion. Does it stand to reason that merely by Home Rule, by the exercise of the privilege of making Irish laws by Irishmen in Dublin, that these people would gain all we have attained by hard and honest labour? That is what they expect up here.

"The Catholics are our servants, and in selecting them we seldom ask their religion. Our employés in most cases expect by the bill to take the place of their masters. That is their conception of Home Rule. They have been told from infancy that the British Government keeps them down because of their religion. They know that the British Government is Protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the superior position held by the Protestants in Ireland is due to favouritism. Under a Home Rule Parliament, that is, a Catholic Parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will at once, and by their own innate force, as faithful believers, spring to the top of the tree, and exchange positions with their former masters and mistresses."

The general effect of my friend's discourse was well summed up by Mr. James Mack, of Galway, who said: —

"When I see that the Belfast men who would make fortunes out of river mud, and who would skin a flea for his hide and tallow, turn their backs on Home Rule, and declare they will have nothing to do with it, I feel sure it can be no good. Then my own experience and observation assure me that, instead of a settlement, it will only be the beginning of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." United Ireland says: – "It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for a day."

Nobody who knows the Irish people ever expected anything else. Agitators who live by agitation will always agitate, and only a few namby-pamby Radicals ever thought otherwise. Those who would fain have sold their souls for the Newcastle Programme also stand to be taken in. This Home Rule Bill will not do. Another must be brought forward immediately. Where is this dreary business going to end? When will Mr. Gladstone consider that England has eaten dirt enough?

Newry, July 4th

No. 44. – THE PROSPEROUS NORTH

This famous historical city must be eminently offensive to Irish Nationalists. It is so clean and sweet and neat and tidy that you can at once see the hopelessness of expecting Home Rule patriotism from the place. There are no dunghills for it to grow in, and my somewhat extensive experiences have long ago taught me that Home Rule and Nationalist patriotism will not flourish in Ireland without manure, and plenty of it. Anyhow, it is mostly associated with heaps of refuse and pungent odours arising from decomposing matter, and in the south and west is scarcely ever found flourishing side by side with modern sanitation. Home Rule not only, like pumpkins and vegetable marrows, requires a feculent soil, but like them, and indeed like all watery and vaporous vegetables, it needs the forcing-frame. Left to its own devices the movement would die at once. There is nothing spontaneous about it. It is a weedy sort of exotic, thriving only by filth and forcing. It cannot live an hour in the climate of Armagh. The cold, keen air of these regions nips it in the bud. The peculative patriots who are now monopolising Westminster have from time to time made descents on the district, to sow the good seed, as it were, by the wayside. But next day came a frost, a killing frost. The Northerners are too mathematical. They have taken Lord Bacon's advice. They "weigh and consider." They want logic, and will not be content with mere rhetoric. They require demonstrations, and have opinions of their own. Before accepting a theory they turn it round and round, and test it with the square, the level, and the line. They care nothing for oratory unless there is sense at the back of it. They know that fine words butter no parsnips, and they know the antecedents of the patriotic orators. They do not believe that a paid Parliament-man is necessarily a self-sacrificing patriot, and they note that Nationalist members are making their patriotism much more profitable than their original and legitimate pursuits, if any. The Armagh folks believe in work, and in keeping things in order. The Scots element is dominant. Not so much in numbers, as in influence. The Kelts are easily traceable, but the races are partly amalgamated, and the genuine Irish are greatly improved. I paraded the streets for many hours, but I saw no dirt, rags, wretchedness. It was market day, and the country people came streaming in from all sides, everyone well dressed and respectable, and in every way equal to the farmers and their wives who on market days drive into Lichfield or Worcester. It was a pleasure to see them, and my Cockney friend, quoted in the Newry letter, might have been tempted to discard his affected superiority, and drawing himself proudly up, to smite himself on the chest, and to say "And hi, too, ham a Hirishman."

The country between Newry and Armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral point of view. After the savage deserts of the West it "Comes o'er my soul like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets." Every yard of ground is going at its best pace. The valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing. Immense vistas of highly cultivated country unroll themselves in every direction. The land is richly timbered, and tall green hedges spring up everywhere. You are reminded of Dorsetshire, of Cheshire, of Normandy, of Rhineland. The people at the wayside stations are all well-dressed and well-shod. Achil Island seems to be at an immeasurable distance. The semi-savages who in Mayo demand autonomy have no supporters here. The Ulster folks eschew them and all their works, and would no more associate with them than with Hottentots. I use the term because the Irish people have ten thousand times been told, and told untruthfully, that Lord Salisbury had applied the term to the nation at large. The people of Mayo and some other parts of Connaught are for the most part worthy of the name, if, indeed, it be not a libel on the Africans. The disgusting savagery of their funeral customs is of itself sufficient to stamp them as lowest barbarians. I am prepared to prove this to the hilt. Let their defenders come forward if they dare.

And so it happens that the inhabitants of Armagh city are mostly Conservatives. They ought to be religious, too, for they have not only two cathedrals and an archbishop, but also a cardinal archbishop, Dr. Logue, to wit. I saw this distinguished ecclesiastic at Newry. He wore the scarlet robe, the extraordinary hat, the immensely thick gold ring of the cardinalate, in a railway carriage. An ordinary sort of man, with the round face and mean features of the typical Keltic farmer. He holds that the people should take their political faith from their priests, but the Northerners hardly agree, and are not so proud of their cardinal as they should be, seeing that he has been raised from the ranks, his father (so they say) having been Lord Leitrim's coachman, and the coachman who was driving when Lord Leitrim was shot. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Armagh has an imposing position on the summit of a steep hill. The portal is approached by sixty or seventy steps in flights of five and ten with steep terraces between, extending over a great space, so that the flights of steps, seen from the bottom of the hill, seem continuous, and have a fine Gustave Doré effect of vastness and majesty. On a neighbouring steep stands the Protestant Cathedral, with its sturdy square tower, memorial of remote antiquity. The city is piled up between the two cathedrals, but mostly around the heretic structure, and away from the Papist pile, which stands among the fields. The Presbyterians have a very beautiful church, apparently of the Armagh marble of which the city is built, the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to the fore. None of these features are visible in the Western markets. A vendor of second-hand clothing stood on a cart well loaded with unconsidered trifles, and this gentleman was especially interesting. A number of poor women stood around while the salesman, who knew his clientèle to their smallest tricks, displayed his wares and recklessly endeavoured to ruin himself for the good of the country. Holding up an article, he would turn it round and round, expatiating on its excellent qualities, and then, after naming the very lowest price consistent with common business principles, would run down the figure to one-tenth or less, with a pause or two here and there for critical comment on his audience, of which he professed to entertain the most unfavourable opinion. Then with a final thump, punching the article contemptuously, he would offer it, regardless of consequences, for half his previous offer. Sometimes he refused to accept the money because the customer was not quick enough. Neither might the people examine his goods. He was master, and more, and found his account in it. He took up a frowsy old gown. "There ye are. Ten shillin's worth of stuff in that. An' ten for the makin'. An' that's twinty. I'll take ten, an' I couldn't afford to take a penny less. Will ye have it? Don't all spake at once. Ye won't. But I'll make ye. I'll take five shillin', four, three, two, one, I'll take sixpence. (Thump.) Take it away. Here! Have it for thruppence. Ye won't? Sweet bad luck to the one of ye is worth thruppence. Ye wouldn't raise tuppence in the crowd of ye. Ye want me to clothe ye for nothin'. An' thin ye'd want me to give ye lodgin' and washin'. 'Twas a black day on me whin I come among such a ruinatin' lot. Here now, sure this ought to timpt ye. A lady's jacket, an' a large, big, roomy jacket at that – fit for a lady that can ate a stone of praties at a male. Thurty shillin's ye'll be offerin' me, but I won't take it. Ye can give me ten, av ye're only quick enough. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two shillin's. Eighteenpence. (Thump.) Take it for a shillin'! Ye won't? Ye didn't sell yer ducks well. Ye didn't get the money for yer eggs. Will I lind ye a trifle? What d'ye take me for? Am I to stand rammin' me bargains down yer throats like wagon wheels? Do yez iver buy any clothes at all, or do yez beg them? Me heart's bruk to pieces wid blayguardin' and bullyraggin. Luk at this. A boy's coat. An it's lined wid woollen linin'; that's the only fault wid it. An' here's a bonnet. A fortin to any young woman. Will ye be plazed to take what ye want for nothin'? Tis charity ye want, ye poor misguided crathurs. 'Tis a pack of paupers I'm discoorsin', God help me."

The Armagh shopkeepers are prosperous and content. "No Home Rule," they say. They are no longer angry with the Nationalists. The snake is scotched, if not killed outright, they think. The whole absurdity has received such a damning exposure that it cannot be revived for another generation. The Separatist party will be perforce compelled to wait until the people have forgotten what Home Rule really means. Therefore, to work again! Useless to waste more time. Ulster will sleep with one eye open, bearing in mind the favourite Northern saying which advises men to put their trust in Providence, but to keep their powder dry. For, like the Achilese, they believe that prayer is effective in shaving, only the Ulstermen prefer to pray over a keen razor. A genial citizen of Armagh said: —

"We would be as ready for Home Rule as any other Irishmen if it meant what we are asked to believe it means. But we know better. We are convinced that it will bring, not prosperity and peace, but bankruptcy and war, intolerance and social retrogression, robbery and spoliation, not only of the landlord but also of everybody else who has anything. The propertied Roman Catholics are just as dead against Home Rule as any Protestants. Only they dare not say so.

"England ought to have sense enough to see that instead of freedom from Irish difficulties, the old grievances will be intensified, and any bill whatever will at once generate a fresh series of complications, so that the English Parliament will be crippled in perpetuity, to the detriment of British interests. The Empire, as a whole, must be weakened, because the Irish masses are most unfriendly, and the more England concedes the more unfriendly Ireland becomes. For Ireland regards all concessions as being wrung from England by superior force and skill, and as being, in short, the fruits of compulsion. Therefore, the more Ireland gets the more exacting she will always become. Ask any Englishman or Scotsman resident in Ireland if the Irish masses are friendly, and everyone will laugh at you. The English Home Rule party say, 'Just so. Let us cure this. This is the principal argument for Home Rule.' They think this sounds very fine. Just as if in private life, a man to whom you have given his due, and more than his due, should continue to abuse you, while you strain every nerve to satisfy him, and go out of your way to obtain peace and quietness, he all the time becoming more and more exacting and more and more discontented. And then as if you were to say, 'I must continue my concessions, my efforts, my sacrifices. I must contrive to satisfy this amiable person.' What a fool any man would be to adopt such a course. A sensible man would say 'You have your due, and you'll get no more.' Treat Ireland so, and all will be well. Be firm and the trouble will amount to nothing. Paddy will soon drop shouting when he sees it has no effect. The agitators will soon dry up, or waste their sweetness on the desert air. But so long as there is a prospect of success, so long as you have a weak-kneed old lunatic in power, so long as Paddy sees a prospect of obtaining substantial advantages, such as reduction of rent or rent-free farms, so long the row will be kept up. If Englishmen could only realize that, the whole movement would cease. For Gladstonian Englishmen mistakenly think that they can settle the thing by further concession and get to their own business. Few of them care for Home Rule on its own merits. They want Ireland out of the way. They are going the wrong way about it. To give this is to give everything. And let me tell you something new. Once the bill becomes law, and the exactions of a Home Rule Government were enforced by England a great part of Ulster would in pure self-protection, being no longer bound to England by the ties of loyalty, sympathy, and mutual dependence – a great part, practically the whole of Ulster, would box the compass and go in for complete independence, as the best thing possible under the circumstances. England would then feel something in her vitals, something serious and something astonishing. The only rebellion that ever gave England any trouble was worked by Ulstermen. The most effective agitators have nearly always been renegade Protestants. Let England think what she is about before she, at the bidding of a foolish old man, turns her back on her faithful friends to throw herself into the arms of her sworn enemies."