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

Not long ago the point in the Lough was a rabbit warren, whence the name. Before that the situation was too exposed to the incursions of rovers to tempt settlers, and Narrow-water Castle, built to defend the pass, was (and is) between the town and Newry. But times have changed. Settlers flocked across from Ayr, from Troon, from Ardrossan, and other Scots ports lying handy. A smart, attractive town has sprung up, starting with a square a hundred yards across. Big ships which cannot get up to Newry discharge in the Lough by means of lighters. An eight-hundred-ton barque from Italy is unloading before my window. There is a first-rate quay, with moorings for many vessels. The harbour is connected by rail with all parts of Ireland, and in it seven hundred to eight hundred ships yearly discharge cargoes. The grassy beach-promenade is half-a-mile long, and an open tramcar runs along the shore for three miles. The residents are alive to the importance of catering for visitors, and the Town Commissioners, a mixed body, have provided bathing accommodation for both sexes. Galway, with thrice the population, a fine promenade, good sands, and a grand bay, has no such arrangements; and Westport has very little accommodation for tourists. The contrast between the North of Ireland and the South and West comes out in everything.

The Methodists and Presbyterians are strong in the town, to say nothing of the two Protestant Churches, one in Warrenpoint and another in the Clonallon suburb. The Catholic Chapel is counterbalanced by the Masonic Hall. Wherefore it is not surprising to learn that the bulk of the townsmen are staunch Unionists. The Nationalist papers have little sale hereabouts, the Belfast News Letter and the Irish Times having the pull. A business man, who has lived here for forty years, said: —

"We are fairly matched in numbers but the Conservatives have the wealth and respectability. The fishermen and labourers are nearly all Home Rulers, simply because they are Catholics. They are quite incapable of saying why they are Home Rulers, and some of them even profess to regard the proposed change with alarm, and say they prefer that things should remain as they are. But although they speak so fairly, yet when the time comes to vote, they vote as the priest tells them. They have no option, with their belief. I don't blame the poor fellows one bit. I followed the report of the South Meath election petition very closely, and I know that the same kind of pressure was exerted here. At Castlejordan Chapel Father O'Connell commanded the people, in a sermon, to go to a Nationalist meeting, and said he would be there, and that their parish priest expected them to go. He said that if any were absent he would expect them to give a good and sufficient reason for their absence. On another occasion a priest met a number of men who were going to an opposition meeting, and turned them back with threats. These priests not only threatened to refuse extreme unction to persons who voted against the clerical party, but they also threatened personal violence, and then said, 'Don't hit back, for I have the holy sacrament on me.' Father John Fay, parish priest of Summerhill, County Meath, told his people that they must not look on him as a mere man; if they did they might have some prejudice against him, for all had their shortcomings. 'The priest is the ambassador of Jesus Christ, and not like other ambassadors. He carries his Lord and Master about with him, and when the priest is with the people Almighty God is with them.' That is what Father Fay reckoned himself. Almighty God, no less. He alluded to the consecrated wafers he had in his pocket. The doctrine of transubstantiation is here invoked to assist in carrying a Home Rule candidate of the right clerical shade. And all the awful language used from the altar, in the confessional, all the threats of eternal damnation, and burning in the fires of hell, all the refusals of mass, and to hear dying confessions, were directed against another section of the Home Rule party, and not against a Unionist at all. How does this promise for the working of an Irish Parliament?

"I note that the English Home Rule papers say nothing good of the bill. They are always praising the management of the Old Parliamentary Hand. They beslaver him with fulsome adoration. They cannot point out anything good in the provisions of the bill, nor in the central idea of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. They have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and House-of-Commons tricks. They bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a thimblerigger. But, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not admired or supported by any intelligent body of public men. The gag-trick ought to settle him. We in Ulster feel sure that a general election to-morrow would for ever deprive him of power. Of course the Old Hand knows that, and will not give the country an opportunity of pronouncing judgment. He and his flock of baa-lambs will put off the day of reckoning as long as ever they can. Either on the present or next year's register he is bound to be badly beaten. His course is clear. He used to have three courses open to him, but now he has only one. He must try to weather the storm until he has a chance of faking the voters' lists so as to improve his own chances. It is said that Mr. Henry Fowler is already preparing such a scheme. Like enough. If tricks will win, I back the G.O.M. There are more tricks in him than in a waggon-load of monkeys. The strangest thing I ever saw or ever heard of is the calmness with which the English people take the proposition that Ireland shall manage English affairs, while Ireland is to manage her own without any interference. I should have expected the British workman to processionise about this. I should have thought the British middle-classes would have been up in arms at the bare thought of so monstrous a proposition. And so they would if they thought it would become law. But, like us, they know there will never be any Home Rule. Then, they are not so nervous as we in Ireland are, because they don't know as we do what Home Rule really means.

"No earthly power can assist the Irish peasantry so long as they remain under the dominion of the priests. Popery is the vampire that is sucking the life-blood of the country. It is fashionable nowadays to abstain from denouncing other religious systems, on the plea of toleration. I agree with perfect toleration, and I am not desirous of making reference to Romanism. But they force it upon us. The Papist clergy say that the poverty of the country is due to English rule. We who live here know that it is due to Romish rule. How is it that all Protestants are well off, and make no complaint? How is it that their children never run barefoot? How is it that their families are well educated, that their dwellings are clean, and that they pay their way? Home Rule may impoverish those whom the teachings and habits of Protestantism have enriched, but neither Home Rule nor anything else will enrich those whom Popery has impoverished. England should turn a deaf ear to the cry for Home Rule, which means the ruin of her only friends in Ireland, and unknown damage to herself. To give her enemies the means wherewithal to damage her is very midsummer madness."

The difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic farmers was shown in striking contrast on the Marquess of Lansdowne's estate in Queen's County. Most of the tenants were non-judicial, and the total rents amounted to £7,000, of which the Marquess allowed £1,100 to be annually expended on the estate. In 1886 the tenants demanded thirty-five per cent. reduction on non-judicial and twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents, threatening as an alternative to adopt the Plan of Campaign. The Marquess refused to comply with this exorbitant demand, but offered reductions of fifteen to twenty-five per cent. on non judicial rents. The tenants declined to pay anything, and the landlord enforced his rights, Mr. Denis Kilbride, M.P., declaring that "these evictions differed from most of the other evictions to this extent, – that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight of intelligence against intelligence, a case of diamond cut diamond." Mr. Kilbride, who held a large farm at a rental of seven hundred and sixty pounds was one of the evicted. Another of these poor destitute, homeless tenants, brutally turned out on the roadside to starve, or die like a dog from exposure, was no sooner evicted than he entered a racehorse for the great contest of the Curragh. This victim of Saxon tyranny was named John Dunne, and his holding comprised more than thirteen hundred acres. Let us hope the colt did him credit. Let us trust that the evicted quadruped carried off the blue ribbon of Kildare. For under the Lansdowne "Rack-rents" the struggling farmer could barely keep one racehorse, which, like the fabled ewe-lamb of ancient story, was his little all. Perhaps Mr. Dunne's colt was related to that well-bred travelling horse, of which the picture adorned the walls of Limerick and its vicinity, and which gloried in the name of Justice to Ireland. There were no evicted Protestants on the Lansdowne estate. Every Protestant farmer paid his rent and steadfastly refused to join the Plan of Campaign.

The injustice of an Irish rent largely depends on the question, To whom is it due? A good Nationalist may draw a higher rent than a Loyalist. A sound Home Ruler may ask for and insist on an exorbitant rent, but he is never denounced by the Nationalist press. The Corporation of Dublin is red-hot in the matter of patriotism. Its Parnellite members have from time to time comprised the pick of the Nationalist agitators. The Dublin "patriot" press has ever been foremost in denouncing Rack-rents. But the city of Dublin is a landlord. It has agricultural tenants who are never allowed under pain of eviction to get into arrears. The members of the Corporation fixed the rents, and, strange to say, the tenants at the first opportunity appealed to the Land Commissioners. Six of them holding four hundred and twenty-seven acres of land, were paying £883 16s. 4d. The rent was therefore over £2 an acre, which is perhaps double the average. The Government valuation was £625 10s. The new rent was finally settled at £683, being an all-round reduction of twenty-three per cent. Lord Clanricarde is frequently denounced by Nationalists for excessive rents, lack of conscience, and non-residence. The Land Commissioners were unable to deduct anything like twenty-three per cent. from the Clanricarde rent-roll. The Councillors of Dublin were never upbraided, nor put in danger of their lives. The Loughrea people shot Lord Clanricarde's agent, his driver, his wife, and several other people, in protest against the Clanricarde rents and to encourage the landlord to live on the estate. About a dozen were murdered altogether. Surely these parallel cases should demonstrate the utter hollowness of the Home Rule agitation.

The Protestants of Warrenpoint, like those of Newry and Belfast, are confident of their ability to hold their own. Their attitude is very different from that of the trembling heretics of Tuam or Tipperary. They are strong in numbers, discipline, and resolution, and in addition to upholding their own personal cause they declare that their isolated co-religionists in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught shall not be forsaken nor left to their own shifts. A rough and ready farmer thus spoke forth his mind: – "England may give the Papists a Parliament to manage Papists, but not to manage Protestants. We should never begin to consider the advisability of submitting to it. The thing's clean impossible. What! Let Papists tax us! Pay for the spread of Popery! Did you ever hear anything so absurd? Not one farthing would I ever pay. I'd leave the country first. So would all the decent, industrious folks. We know what happens in every country where Popery gets the mastery. Look at Spain, Italy, and the Catholic parts of Ireland. If England sends an army of redcoats to punish us for our loyalty, we shall give way at once. We've sense enough to know that we could do nothing against the Queen's troops, even if we wished to fight them. But to take arms against the soldiers of England would be quite against our principles. What we should ultimately do, under military compulsion, we have not yet decided, but we should never under any circumstances show fight against the Queen. We don't think the day will ever come when England would send the military to shoot us for sticking to England. As for the police of the Irish Parliament, that's another thing. They would have no assistance in Ulster. The sheriff's officers, when engaged in the compulsory raising of taxes, would have a lively time, and I am sure they would never get any money. We don't take it seriously yet. If the bill were actually on the statute book and an Irish House of Commons doing the Finnigan's wake business with the furniture legs of the College Green Lunatic Asylum, even then we would not take it seriously. We shall never think it worth while to be serious until we see the British army firing on us. It's too ridiculous. We pay no attention to the Irish Nationalist members, whom we regard as a bankrupt lot of bursted windbags. Why, hardly one of them could be trusted with the till of a totty-wallop shop. To how many of them would Gladstone lend a sovereign? How many of them could get tick in London for a new rig-out? Dublin is out of the question, of course, because in Dublin these statesmen are known. Would Englishmen let such men govern their country? Not likely. Nor will we."

I submitted that, so far as at present enacted, these very heroes were really going to govern both England and Ireland. The great organ of English Roman Catholicism objecting to this has given great offence to the Irish Papists, and the Nationalist press is shrieking with futile rage. English Catholicism and Irish Catholicism seem to be entirely different politically. Englishmen are Englishmen first, and Catholics next. Irishmen look first to Rome, and cordially hate England, – there is the difference. The Conservative Catholic organ says, referring to the retention of members at Westminster: —

"With just as much reason might we import a band of eighty South Africans, and whether they were eighty Zulus or eighty Archangels in disguise, their presence in the British House of Commons would be a gross violation of the principles of representative government. At present, as members of the common Parliament of an United Kingdom, English and Irish members have correlative rights, but when Irish affairs are withdrawn from the Parliament at Westminster, on that day must the Irish members cease to take part in purely British legislation. We are asked to grant Home Rule to Ireland in deference to the wishes of the local majority, and then we are told we must let the local majority in Great Britain be dictated to by eighty men who have neither stake in the country nor business in her Parliament, and who do not represent so much as even a rotten borough between them."

My Warrenpoint friend may well say that he cannot take it seriously. The dignity of the English Parliament is, however, a matter of great concern to Englishmen, and that for the present seems consigned to the charge of Dillon, Healy, and Co. And all to further the Union of Hearts. Yet Misther Tay Day Sullivan, not content with the management of both England and Ireland, proposes to oust us from India! The Irish faction will boss the wuruld from ind to ind. Begorra, they will. Tay Day says: —

England fears for India,For there her cruel workWas just as foul and hatefulAs any of the Turk.But when God sends us thitherHer rule to overthrow,With fearless hearts rejoicingTo work His will we'll go.Stupid little EnglandThinks to say us nay,But paltry little EnglandShall never stop our way.

There is a tribute of affection! There is an outpouring of loyalty! There is an anthem to celebrate the Union of Hearts! It should be sung round a table, Gladstonians and Irish Home Rulers hand in hand, as in "Auld Lang Syne," and given out by Pastor W.E. Gladstone, as short metre, two lines at a time. Why not? Stranger things are happening every day.

Warrenpoint, July 20th.

No. 51. – THE IRISH PRESS ON "FINALITY."

Englishmen who have any doubt remaining anent Home Rule should read the Irish Nationalist press. Those who propose to concede the measure for the sake of peace and finality should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the United Ireland leader, which commences: "Let it be pretended no more that the fate of the present Home Rule Bill is henceforth a matter of vital interest to us," and afterwards says, "We shall have to go on fighting – to go on fighting – without even a temporary intermission, and whether this bill pass or not, this year or next, or the year after, no matter what becomes of it." "Mr. Gladstone's bill in its present form is exactly such a Central Council as Mr. Chamberlain would have agreed to at the time of the Round Table Conference. If it pass it can be no more than a milestone on our march. To talk of finality any more would be simply grotesque, and yet the Gladstonians have urged, in season and out of season, that the bill would be nothing if not 'final, reasonably final.'" The English Home Rulers are dealt with as severely as the most hardened Unionist could wish. The writer speaks of their "disastrous fatuity in consuming the whole of this session of the Imperial Parliament, and the greater part of one or two more, over a Home Rule Bill which will settle nothing, no, not even for three years." Disastrous fatuity is a good phrase, an excellent good phrase, in sooth. I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word. Those who believe in the security of the Gladstonian safeguards, and the pacific disposition of the Nationalist party, will perhaps be able to put a friendly construction on the passage which begins: – "And it is already settled that no man in Ireland is to bear a rifle unless he be a soldier of the army of occupation, which will still be encamped on our soil 'to mak siccare.' This hateful and degrading prohibition is what no Parnellite can pretend to consent to for any reasonable or unreasonable fraction of a period of reasonable finality." Those who believe in the severe commercial morality and rigid honesty of the authors of the Plan of Campaign will doubtless find their favourable opinion confirmed by the succeeding remarkable complaint. "And the Irish Legislature – would it not be better policy now to refuse to regard it as a Parliament and to refuse to call it so? – is forbidden to take away any person's property except by process of law, in accordance with settled principles and precedents. There's trouble here." There is indeed trouble here. An Irish Parliament which could not "take away any person's property except by process of law" would be shorn of its principal functions, would fail to justify its existence, would fall immeasurably short of the popular expectation, would have, in fact, no earthly raison d' être. An Irish Parliament without power to take from him that hath, and give unto him that hath not, would be without functions, and the foinest pisintry in the wuruld would instantly rebel against such a nonentity. The farmers remember the oft-repeated statements of Mr. Timothy Healy to the effect that "landlordism is the prop of the British Government, and it is that we want to kick away." And the benefit accruing from this vigorous action was by the same eloquent patriot very plainly stated. "The people of this country ought never to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." And they never will be satisfied, with or without rent. Their dissatisfaction has enabled Mr. Healy to put money in his purse. The wail of a great people whose Parliament will not be allowed to rob from all and sundry is accounted for towards the close of the article. There will be trouble "as soon as the Dublin Legislature becomes hard pushed for money, which will be desperately often from the beginning, as is now plain."

These considerations are closely observed by the people of Strabane, the best of whom are steady loyalists. The town is bright, brisk, thriving, and Scotch. Or rather the Scottish element is conspicuous in the main street, with its McCollum and Mackey, its Crawford and Aikin, its Colhoun and Finlay, its Lowry and McAnaw. There are several shirt factories, of which the biggest is run by Stewart and Macdonald. A number of names which may be either English or Scotch are equally to the front, Taylor, White, and Simms, cheek by jowl with doubtful cases like McCosker and McElhinney, which, however, smack somewhat of the tartan. Macfarlane issues a notice, which is printed by Blair, and besides White I notice Black and Gray. The establishment of Mr. Snodgrass, near the Scotch Boot Stores, was remindful of Charles Dickens, and the small flautist piping "Annie Laurie," put me in mind of Robert Burns, the hairdresser of Warrenpoint. It became difficult to realise that this was Ireland. Not far away are two mountains, named respectively Mary Gray and Bessie Bell. The hills round Strabane retain their Irish names, but the genius of the place is distinctly Scottish. There are Irish parts of Strabane, but they are unpleasant and unimportant. The Unionists pay three-fourths of the rates, but there is only one Loyalist on the Town Council, which has nine members, of which number three retire annually in rotation. The Town Commissioners, as a whole, are not highly esteemed by the people of Strabane. One of them, the leading light of the local Nationalist party, is rated at £8. Another, a working plasterer, is the accredited agent of the Home Rule party in this division of Tyrone, and is playfully called the Objector-General, on account of his characteristic method of working in the Registry Court. The Chairman, who occupies the position of Mayor, but without the title, is rated at £13. Two small publicans are rated at £12 and £27 respectively. The remainder, including the Conservative member, are rated sufficiently high to be regarded as having some stake in the country, and no objection is taken on this score. But the Strabane Town Commissioners are intolerant. Apart from the fact that they admit only one Unionist to a body which derives three-fourths of its funds from Unionists, they are distinctly intolerant in the matter of employment. They employ no Protestants. Their solicitor, Mr. William Wilson, is indeed of the proscribed faith, but he seems to have inherited the office from his father. No Protestants need apply for any situation, however small, under the Strabane Town Council, which pays its servants with the money of Protestants. This is the party which clamours for equality of treatment, and eternally complains of the exclusiveness of Protestantism. A well-known Strabaner said: —

"If we are shut out from the Town Council, it is, to some extent, our own fault. Two causes mainly contributed to this result – the apathy of the Unionist voters, and the unwillingness of our best men to rub up against some of the men put forward by the other party. I say some only, not all. We did not care to be mixed up with fellows of low class, especially when they are as ignorant as possible. Then again, we are well represented on the Poor Law Board, which really has all the power, attending as it does to sanitation and so forth. The Nationalists greedily snap at every shred and semblance of power, and leave no stone unturned to get the mastery. There has come a sad change over the poor folks, that is, the Roman Catholics. Formerly they were civil and kind, and we all got on famously together. If a Protestant was out in the country a mile or two away, and rain came on, they were hospitable with that beautiful old courtesy which was one of the best things the nation possessed. It was something to boast of. It was unique, and could not be found in such perfection out of Ireland. It's all over now. Since Mr. Gladstone commenced to destroy the country the poor folks hereabouts have changed very much for the worse, and if you now got caught in a shower while out in the country you might be drowned before they would ask you to take shelter. They expect to be enjoying our property very shortly. They fully believe that they will soon have the land and goods that we have worked for and earned by the sweat of our brows, while they have stood by complaining, instead of doing their best to get on. What shall I do if Home Rule becomes law? Just this – I shall get out of the country in double-quick time. There will be no security for life or property. The country will be a perfect Hell upon Earth."