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

"What, then, are my opinions, expressed in a concise form? I will tell you. They are what you would call sound. They are the opinions of Balfour, of Lord Salisbury. I hold Mr. Balfour in profound esteem as a wise and sagacious administrator, a terror to evil-doers, and an encourager of those who do well. I have a real affection for Mr. Balfour, as for a great benefactor of my beloved country. For I love my country so well that I feel the keenest personal interest in her welfare. Perhaps I have a deeper affection for Ireland than even Tim Healy or Sexton or Harcourt or O'Brien. What do I think of Gladstone? I think him a scourge of Ireland, a curse, a destroyer far worse than Oliver Cromwell. A heaven-born statesman? Do his followers call him that? Well, I can only say that I hope and trust that heaven will not be blessed with any further family."

A military officer resident in this region, an Irishman bred and born, said, "It's all a matter of religion. I was the other day reading Maxwell's account of the Irish rebellion of 1798, and I observed that although the Northern rebellion, which was the most dangerous, as being the best organised, was mainly led by Protestants, yet in other parts of Ireland, when a suspected person was captured by the rebels, the first question was, not are you in favour of the Irish Republic, but what is your religion? And the Protestants generally had their throats cut. The same thing would occur again, under similar circumstances. Religion would be the test. If a general state of lawlessness should at any time arise, the Protestants in lonely districts would not be safe from murder. Yes, I do say it, and I stick to it. A very large number of outrages have been committed which would not have taken place but for the religion of the offending party. It is a virtue to lie to a heretic, to cheat him, to damage him, to keep him out of heaven if possible. Anybody who knows Catholic Ireland would agree with this most heartily. They believe that whosoever killeth heretics doeth God service.

"Irish folks are better than the people of other nations, and also much worse. When they are good they are very good, and when they are bad they are very bad. They run to extremes in a way which cool-headed Britons do not understand. They are impulsive, and they jump to conclusions. Their great disadvantage is a crushing clerical influence. What's the use of thinking about anything when Father Pat does it for them? What's the use of listening to argument when you must in the end vote as Father Pat orders?

"Englishmen have no idea what a splendid fellow the Irish peasant really is when his mind is not poisoned and his unfortunate ignorance exploited. I could give you instances of fidelity, affectionate self-sacrifice and devotion which would astonish you. Not isolated or sporadic cases, but arising from the average level of the Irish character. After considerable travel, and a painstaking study of the characteristics of various nations, I have come to the conclusion that, taking one consideration with another, I prefer Paddy, ignorant as he is. For after all his ignorance is not his own fault. He sees no newspapers except an occasional local sheet, which is almost certain to be a wretched, lying, priest-inspired rag. If he were seen looking at any other it would be bad for him. But newspapers are practically unknown in the agricultural districts. And men do not meet in crowds as in England. They have not the attrition which wears away the angularities. They live solitary among the mountains, or away in the fields, and they never hear lectures, have no Institutes, get no chance of improvement. The priest is their Clan Chieftain, their spiritual adviser, their temporal adviser, their newspaper, their only channel of superior information." At this point a tall, red-bearded man who was passing touched his hat to the Colonel, who said, "My gamekeeper. A fine, rough-coated Scotsman. Came over here a mad Gladstonian. Pinned his faith to the G.O.M. Followed him blindly, and owned he was content to do it. Get into conversation with him. Observe the change, the decided change in his opinions."

Soon I had Velveteens in full cry. His opinions were indeed decided. Having admitted that they had boxed the compass during a six months' residence in this down-trodden country, he went on to say, "The only way ye could cure the discontent is to make no attempt at it. Then the agitation would stop. The people are the biggest fules I ever saw. Instead of returning a sound, advanced Radical like Emerson T. Herdman, a man who pays them thirty or forty thousand a year, and who spends all his money in their midst, the fules go and vote for a thing like Arthur O'Connor, who never was here but once, and who never did them the compliment of issuing an address. When Mr. Herdman came to Stranorlar the people stoned him and his friends. And yet nobody ever said, or could say, a word against the Herdmans, who are among the most popular people in Ireland, and who deserve the best that can be said of them. O'Connor costs these poor folks two hundred pounds a year. They raise it in the constituency. Mr. Herdman would have cost them nothing, and might have spent even more than he does at present. He has opened up the greatest industry in the North-west of Ireland, keeps a whole country-side going, and is an out-and-out Liberal. The greatest exertions were made to secure his return, and the Catholics promised to vote for him. He stumped the country, and left no stone unturned. The Nationalist candidate never came here till the last moment, and, as I said, issued no address. The people knew nothing of him, and had never heard of him. But they voted as the priests told them, and they would have voted for a stick. Ought such people to have the franchise?

"What would I do to settle the Irish question? I've heard that somebody proposed sinking the country for twenty-four hours. That might do. Or you could withdraw the police and military, and in every market town open a depôt for the gratuitous distribution of arms and ammunition. In ten days there would only be a very small population, and you could then plant the country with people who would make the best of it, and mind their work, instead of spending their time standing about waiting for Home Rule to make them rich without work. Or you could make a law which required every priest in the country to clear out in twenty-four hours, on penalty of death. That is as impossible as sinking the island, but it would be quite as sure a cure. Those are my opinions, and those must be the opinions of every man who has lived here and looked about him for a reasonable length of time. The Scots Gladstonians are very decent folk. They mean well, and they are friendly to Ireland. Their only fault lies in following their hero, and in thinking that he cannot do wrong. If they knew what I know, they would be of my mind. For I was as great a Gladstonian as any of them."

A Presbyterian farmer said: – "On this estate the whole of the tenants are Presbyterians. The agent told me that early in June the whole of the rents up to May were paid, and that he would think that there was not such another case in Ireland. How is that? Well, if the tenants had been Romanists they would have so many things to pay. The priests live like fighting cocks. Father McFadden, of Gweedore, makes from a thousand to fifteen hundred a year. That is the man on whose door-step Inspector Martin was murdered. The crowd beat out his brains with palings, and when he tried to get into the priest's house, the door was shut in his face. The clergy live well, and drink like troopers. The easiest job in Ireland, and – if your conscience would allow it – the best in every way. You are treated with great respect, you have great influence, you have nothing to do, and you are extremely well paid for it. Sometimes I think that humbug pays better than hard work. The priests do not look after the poor. They do not work among the destitute and ignorant after the fashion of the English clergy. They are always extracting, extracting, extracting. The poor are ground down by their exactions till they can't pay their rent. And that is why the agent said that probably no other estate in Ireland could show such a record as ours.

"Home Rule will not satisfy the people. An Irish Parliament will do them no good, no, nor fifty Irish Parliaments. They are unfriendly to England because she is Protestant. People of the only true faith cannot bear to be governed by a heretic nation. The laws are all right, and they know it, but their animosity is excited by stories of wrong-doing in their forefathers' days, and while on the one hand they feel that they might easily be better off, on the other they are told that the brutal Saxon keeps them poor. All this is done by the priests. They actually admit that the English laws are excellent, but then they fall back on the allegation that their administration is corrupt. In vain you point to the Roman Catholic judges. In vain you go over England's successive attempts to pacify Ireland by conciliatory measures. The priest ruins all, for while your friend seems to agree with you – they are so easily led – yet the priest will secure his vote to a certainty. So long as a heretic power is at the head, so long Ireland will be discontented. If the country were under the rule of a Roman Catholic power, the people of Ireland would be satisfied with any laws whatever. They would not grumble at anything. The only alternative is the spread of education, and that goes on very slowly in Ireland. We are very, very backward in Donegal, but not nearly so bad as in the south and west. We have a bad name for poverty and ignorance, but we do not deserve it in the same degree as the Munster and Connaught folks. We dislike the Connaught people just as much as you do in England. We hate dirt, and lawlessness and disorder, and therefore we claim to be superior to the rest of the poor counties. This is, of course, the civilised part of Donegal. But wherever you go, you see nothing like the dirt of counties Galway and Mayo.

"We want railways to open up the country. Balfour was building them for us, and his institution of the Congested Districts Board did wonderful things for us. Why, if he had done nothing but improve the breed of fowls he would still have been worthy of remembrance as a benefactor of this country. Before the Congested Board Committee introduced superior breeds of fowls, the chickens were like blackbirds. You could sit down and eat half-a-dozen of them. They were no bigger than your thumb. But now we can get fowls equal to anything you have in England. The same may be said of the horses, the pigs, the cows, and all kinds of domestic animals and poultry. The fishing industry has saved whole districts from starvation, and has done good all round. When we get an Irish Parliament the grants for all these purposes will be discontinued, and the tide of progress will be checked. The poor folks are quite unable to see that by sticking to England we have a wealthy neighbour to borrow from, and that this is an inestimable advantage to a poor country like Ireland. Not long ago I mentioned this to a priest, but he said, 'When we have a Parliament of our own we'll not need to borrow money, for we'll have more than we know what to do with. Did not Mr. Gladstone say we should have a chronic plethora of money? John Bull certainly sends some money over here, but he had it from here to begin with. He stole it from Ireland, and he is only like a thief whose conscience urges him to restore a portion, a very small portion, of the stolen goods. When we get Independence – he used the word Independence – we shall be in a position to lend money instead of needing to borrow!' The person who said all this is the most influential politician of this district. His word to his flock is law. Not one of them dare for his life vote otherwise than as he tells them. They do not think this a hardship. They have no political convictions, and would just as soon vote any one way as any other."

A Donegal Home Ruler said that the poor folks were quite right in following the priests, and wanted to know if they would be right in following the Tories. He said: – "They are no more ignorant than the British working men, and not less independent. Don't the working classes follow their leaders, voting in heaps, just as they are told, without any notion of the Empire's greatness, and entirely with a view to their own interests? Could anybody be more stupid, more totally incapable of giving a valid reason for his action than your vaunted British workman? Why, if the specimens we get over here are any guide, if the samples are anything like the bulk, you might as well poll a flock of sheep as a crowd of British working men. I say the Irish peasantry are superior in intellect, conduct, and chayracther, and that in following the priest they are acting as reasonable as your British working-man, who follows his strike leaders and trade agitators, and is perpetually cutting off his nose to spite his face. No, we shall not get Home Rule now, but we must have it later on. Then we shall demand more. Every time we have to ask we shall want more and more. We shall wring it from England, and we shall make her pay for the trouble she gives. She must be charged a sort of war indemnity."

The Dundalk press is on my track. I heard of this in Newry, but the Dundalk papers do not reach the next town to Dundalk, and not a sheet could be had for love or money. A friend having told me that the Gazette was reviled, great efforts were made to obtain the reviling print, but in vain. At last I saw the Dundalk Democrat, which in a two-column comment on its colleague's maledictions of your humble commissioner cleared me of the charges brought by the original thunderer, which I have not yet been able to see. One of the said charges is based on the statement that I asked to be allowed to be present at the meeting, which permission was readily accorded. The meeting was public and was placarded from one end of Dundalk to the other. The public were invited to assemble in their thousands, and to join in the onward march to freedom. Not more than twenty people answered to the call, and the meeting was therefore a dead failure. The idea of asking leave to be present at a public meeting is absurd. The vituperative print says that I was not asked to deliver an address, but was told that I could "do so if I liked." The truth is manifest by the admitted fact that I declined, as being no speaker. Such is the minute hair-splitting of Irish argumentation. The quips and cranks of Tipperary Humphreys will be remembered, the paltry quibbles by which he sought to establish a case, and his final retreat under cover of the statement that he could not have believed that "such a state of things was possible." The Dundalk marchers to freedom (to the number of twenty) were not precisely the pick of the local respectability, and my escape must be regarded as providential. As to their outpourings of abuse, my philosophy resembles that of the old whipper-in of the Meynell-Ingram Hounds: – "I bain't a cruel chap, I bain't. But when I puts the lash among the hounds I dew like to hear 'em yowl; I dew like to see 'em skip, and writhe, and look mad. For if ye don't make 'em feel, and if ye can't hear 'em yowl, there's railly no pleasure in thrashin' of 'em."

Donegal, August 1st.

No. 56. – DO-NOTHING DONEGAL

Donegal improves on acquaintance. At first dull, dreary, and disappointing, a more extended examination reveals much that is interesting. The river Eske runs through the town, rippling over a rocky bed of limestone like the Dee at Llangollen. Mountains arise on every hand, some in the foreground, green and pleasant, backed by sterile ranges having serrated summits, dark and frowning. The harbour has an old-world look, with its quaint fishing boats and groves of trees running down to the water's edge. The land is decidedly humpy, and the sea meanders among the meadows in long fillets like trout brooks, sometimes tapering off to narrow ditches over which you can easily step at highest tide. The land is fertile, mostly grazing, and the cattle are of large and superior breed. The country is well wooded, and the hedgerows are tall and well-kept. The ancient abbey, like Mr. Gladstone's reputation, is in ruins. There is a ruined castle on the river bank, and on the other side, exactly opposite, a Methodist church, bearing the legend, All are Welcome. The principal "square" is triangular, and has some good shops, which do most of their business on market-days. An enormous anchor, half embedded in the mud of the harbour, was left there by the French fleet during "the throubles of the ruction." It is rather in the way, but three generations of Irishmen have not found time to remove it. "Like ourselves and our counthry it will stick in the mud until the end of time," said a native. There is much lounging at corners by men who are probably waiting for the Home Rule Bill, but the people compare favourably with those of the South and West. They have more grit, more industry, more perseverance. They are simple, civil, and obliging. They are also cleaner and more tidy than the Southerners, though decidedly poorer. "They get no price for their produce, no reasonable wages for their industry. Their patience and contentment are surprising, considering their circumstances. You can get work done for twopence a day. The Southerners get thrice the money for their farm produce. We have no ready means of getting things on the market. I have thirty tons of hay to sell, and nobody in the district would give me a pound for it." Thus spake one of the leading citizens, a Roman Catholic, dead against Home Rule. "The resident gentry are all we have to depend upon. Once plant a Parliament in Dublin, and there will be a general exodus of the moneyed classes. Then the poor folks will have nobody to look to, and they must follow them to England – which will certainly be overrun with destitute Irish. Things have grown worse and worse during the last ten years. Under a steady Government the country would gradually improve until the comfort of the people would give the agitators nothing to work upon. But with change upon change, with one final settlement upon another final settlement, we don't know where we are, nor what is going to happen next. How can we settle down to work? How can we launch out into industrial enterprises? Every man who has anything holds his hand for fear of loss. An Irish Parliament would be a Parliament of confiscation, and nobody knows where they would draw the line. Mr. Gladstone's land legislation has been a succession of swindles. The principle of judicial rents is an atrocious violation of the principles of business, one of which lays down the dictum that a thing is worth as much as it will fetch. Surely the landlord ought to be allowed to accept the offer of the highest bidder. And if you take from him that right, and say to him you shall only accept such a price, then you should at least guarantee the payment. But no, Mr. Gladstone says you shall only have a certain price, and you must recover the money as best you can. The judicial rent law, so much vaunted, is not so good as it looks. It is often a premium on indolence and a punishment of industry, and therefore grossly unjust. Let me tell you how it works in Donegal.

"Thirty years ago two men took contiguous farms of exactly the same extent, at the same rent. There was not a pin to choose in the land, either. One of them worked continuously, improving the farm until he almost wrought himself to pieces. He and his children were at it night and day, and their industry did wonders, as it always does. The other was a lazy fellow, who lay in bed till mid-day and spent half his waking hours at fairs and dances. The land in his occupation deteriorated until it seemed to want reclaiming. The rent of both farms was ten pounds a year. The Land Commission had both cases before them, and, of course, based their estimate on the present value of the land, without reference to any other considerations. Now mark what happened —

"The industrious man, who should have received a premium as a benefactor of his country, had his rent raised from ten pounds to eighteen.

"The lazy man, who should have been kicked out of the country as worthless, and an enemy to progress, had his rent reduced from ten pounds to two pounds fifteen shillings.

"The judicial reductions have hardly ever been of real benefit. The average Irish peasant is so constituted that when he has less to pay he simply makes less effort, or spends the difference, and more than the difference, in extra whiskey.

"The Donegal peasantry derive much benefit from the Irish practice of con-acre. Con-acre means that the land is rented for one crop. It pays the landowner well, and he always gets his money. The man who has no land hires a piece for his potatoes, or for his oats, takes possession when he puts in his seed, and delivers up possession when he gets his crop off the ground. They pay, I think, because they have not the land long enough to long for it altogether."

I climbed the hill behind the Arran Hotel in company with the proprietor, Mr. Timony, who also runs several large shops in Donegal. The view is magnificent, extending in one direction to Carnowee and the Blue Stack mountains, in another far over the wood-fringed bay, and southward to the Benbulben range, terminated by a steep descent like the end of a house. Mr. Timony is a Romanist, but is strongly opposed to Home Rule, which in his opinion would lead to endless trouble and confusion, and would, bring distress on the district, and not prosperity. The hill was covered with mushrooms, which were rotting unregarded. Mine host confessed that he did not know the edible from the poisonous fungi, and said that the peasants of Donegal were in the same case. "There are tons of these things on the mountains, but no one gathers them. They would be afraid to go near them for fear they would drop down dead on the spot." He showed me a large stock of hand-woven cloth made by the peasantry, who, to their credit, have mastered the process from beginning to end, and with their rude appliances produce a good-looking article, of which the only fault is that it can never be worn out. Irishmen will not buy it, but England is an excellent customer, and the trade, already large, is rapidly increasing. Good tweed, twenty-seven inches wide, may be bought in Donegal for a shilling a yard, and stout twills for one-and-sixpence. The people shear the wool, card it, spin it, dye the yarn made from herbs growing on the sea-shore, on the rocks, in the meadows, and weave it into cloth, which is much in vogue for shooting suits and ladies' dresses. The pieces run from twenty to seventy yards long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a ready sale at the wholesale depôts, the price being regulated by the fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. The Nationalist advice to burn everything English except English coals, is as hollow as other patriotic utterances. But for England the Donegal peasantry would have no market for their goods. "It isn't fine enough for Irishmen," said Mr. Timony. "They prefer English shoddy. They like the smooth-looking cloth such as I have seen made in Yorkshire, manufactured out of rags. There's not ten pounds of wool in a thousand yards of it. It looks more eyeable, but there is no length nor toughness in the thread, which is made out of old worn-out cloth. Our folks couldn't spin it. They must use good new yarn, or they couldn't work at all. The Yorkshire folks have machinery, and you can do anything with machinery."

A good old Methodist said: – "The English people ought now to realise the pass their Grand Old Gagger has brought them to. The finest assembly of gentlemen in the world are bandying evil names and punching each other's heads. Just what you might expect when the Prime Minister has allied himself with blackguards and law-breakers. I used to be one of his staunchest supporters, but I draw the line at lunacy. When I saw him truckling to low-bred adventurers who are not worth sixpence beyond what they can wring from their dupes, I thought it time to change my course. When I saw the class of men with whom he acts and under whose orders he works, I changed my opinion of the man. For evil communications corrupt good manners, and a man is known by the company he keeps. The whole session has been a degradation of the British Parliament. Things have been going from bad to worse until we have reached the climax. If Mr. Gladstone remains in power we must change the qualifications of our members, and send the best fighting men and the hardest hitters. We must heckle candidates as to their 'science,' and ascertain if their wind is good, and whether they are active on their pins. And in course of time, if the G.O.M. still presides, we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out 'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,' without a word of protest from the Prime Minister, you must admit that the dignity of the House is a thing of the past. When you see the general trend, you can judge what will be the result. When you see in which direction a man is going, you can judge where he will arrive at last.