Ireland as It Is Part 38

He stopped the cart and protested against this statement. Unknowingly I had tapped a celebrity. My hodden-gray friend was none other than the famous Detective James Magee, who arrested James Stephens, the Number One, the Head Centre of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood; also John O'Leary, editor of the Fenian _Irish People_, of which O'Donovan Rossa was business manager. O'Leary was a doctor hailing from Tipperary. He asked Magee if he might have his "night-cap," and his captor allowed him to call for the whiskey at a well-known Dublin resort, on parole of honour. Later, as a crowded street was reached, O'Leary said, "There are three thousand of my friends there. If you go that way I cannot save you. Better try a back street." "That was handsome," said Mr. Magee. "O'Leary was a gentleman. Stephens was only a 'blower.'" My friend was unalterably set against Home Rule, which he regards as an empty, foolish cry. Being a pensioner he wishes to be reticent, but his opinion is p.r.o.nounced, and the Sligo people know it.

He has a high opinion of the law-abiding instincts of his compatriots, and believes that "if they were left to themselves" the district would need no police. "A better-hearted, kinder, more obliging people never lived," said this excellent judge, who after twenty-seven years of police service, returned to end his days among them. And my short experience of the Sligo folks confirms this statement. They were not all so reserved as Detective-sergeant Magee. A thriving shopkeeper said:--"The majority, if you count noses, are for Home Rule, but if you count only brains and intelligence you would find an overwhelming majority against it. Mr. Gladstone and his set of blockheads seem quite impervious to reason, and even the const.i.tuencies of England seem to lack information. The reason is plain. While we have been minding our work the Nationalists have been agitating. For thirteen years they have been on the stump, and have stolen a march on us and they take a lot of catching up. We allowed them to empty their wind-bags, forgetting that the English people were not so conversant with the facts or with the character of the orators as we are. We thought that no precautions were required, and that their preposterous statements would be received in England as intelligent, enlightened people would receive them here. Their strength in Ireland is almost entirely among the illiterates, who in the polling booths are coerced by their priests. I have seen a man crying because he had not been allowed to vote for the candidate supported by his employer. Such a ridiculous thing could not happen in England, and Englishmen who do not know Ireland and the Irish will scarcely credit it. This shows how unable most Saxons are to understand Irish character and motive.

"All our civilisation is from England, all our progress, all our enlightenment, and nearly all our money. As a poor, helpless, semi-barbaric country, we ought to cleave to England with all our might and main. A more and more complete and perfect unity is our best hope. To ask for separation is the wildest absurdity. And just as we were beginning to go along smoothly! That was entirely due to the just but firm administration of the Balfour period.

"Among Irishmen justice with firmness is always appreciated in the long run. An Irish Secretary needs the hand of iron in the velvet glove. Paddy spots the philanthropic fumbler in a moment, and uses him, laughing the while at what he rightly calls his 'philandering.'

Morley means well, but n.o.body here respects him. He knows no more of Irish character than a blind bull-pup. His master in my opinion is worse, if possible. He is deaf to all the arguments of Irish sense and Irish culture, and proposes to finally resolve the unresolvable, to settle the Irish difficulty by a Catholic Parliament. As well go out with a net to catch the wind. He listens to the representatives of ruffianism, counting them first. We kept silent too long. We thought the donkeys might bray for ever without shaking down the stars. We were wrong. Now we are almost powerless. For what are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd of blackguards with big sticks?"

While conversing with Detective Magee, that astute gentleman pointed out The O'Connor, lineal King of Connaught, and a staunch Unionist! A devout Catholic and intensely Irish, yet the uncrowned King is a loyalist. But The O'Connor is a man of superior understanding. After this I saw three Home Rulers--yea, I conversed with four, one a positive person whom I mistook for a farm labourer, but who proved to be a National schoolmaster who absorbed whiskey like the desert sands.

A decent farmer who thought the Land League the finest thing in the wuruld, complained that while the British Government have contracted for hay at 8 15s., yet he and his friends could only get 3 for "best saved." His idea of Home Rule was--No Rent to pay. A ferocious commercial traveller, whose jaw and cheekbones were as much too large as his eyes and forehead were too small, wanted to know "what right had England to rule Ireland? Ye have no more right to rule Ireland than to rule France." This was his only idea. He was a patriot of the sentimental type, and wished that Ireland might take her place as an independent nation with Belgium, Switzerland, Holland. His hero was Paddy O'Donnell, of Bedlam--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--who for five days held his house, since called the Fort, against a strong force of police. "If all was like O'Donnell, we'd soon have the counthry to ourselves," said my commercial friend. "An' if ye don't let us go, we'll make ye wish ye did. Wait till ye get into throuble with France.

The Siam business may yet turn up thrumps." He was very voluble, very loud, very illiterate, and I declined to discuss the question except in Irish, which he did not speak. Like most of the patriot orators of Ireland, he was as ignorant of his native language as of his native literature, and every other. This is the cla.s.s from whom the political speakers who infest country places are drawn. At first sight they seem unworthy of notice, but contempt may be pushed too far. Even wasps become dangerous when in swarms. And Hatred is like fire: it makes even light rubbish deadly.

Sligo, August 8th.

No. 59.--IRISH NATIONALISM IS NOT PATRIOTISM.

My tour through Ireland having now come to an end, I propose to sum up the conclusions I have formed in this and the three following articles. In connection with the Home Rule Bill, we have heard much of the "aspirations of a people." Mr. Gladstone has taken up the cry, and his subservient followers at once brought their speeches and facial expressions into harmony with the selected sentiment. These anti-English Englishmen would fain pose as persons in advance of their time, determined to do justice though the heavens should fall. They agree with Mr. Labouchere that John Bull is a tyrant, a robber, and a hypocrite, and that it is high time justice should be done to Ireland.

As no substantial injustice exists, it is necessary to fall back on sentiment, and to quote the "aspirations of a people." The desire for a system of Irish autonomy is praised as a manifestation of patriotism which in all ages of the world has been honoured by worthy men. The English supporters of Mr. Gladstone, with their a.s.sumption of superior virtue, their Pharasaic We are not as other men, nor even as these Tories, would have us believe that with the granting of self-rule Ireland will be satisfied, that the gratification of a laudable sentiment is all that is now required to bind together the peoples in an infrangible Union of Hearts, and that peace and prosperity will at once follow in the wake of this merely sentimental concession.

The great ma.s.s of the Irish electorate know nothing of all this. Tap them wherever you will, north, south, east, or west, and you find one dominant thought--that of pecuniary gain. They know nothing of the proposed bill, and are totally incapable of comprehending its scope and effect. The peasantry of Ireland are actuated by motives entirely different from those affecting the rural const.i.tuencies of England.

The Briton is proud of his country, believes in its might, justice, supremacy; and despite occasional grumbling is satisfied that the powers that be will do him right in the long run. The Irish peasant is essentially inimical to England. He is always "agin the Government"--that is, the rule of England. He regards the landlord as trebly an enemy--firstly as a heretic, secondly as the representative of British rule, and last, but by no means least, as the person to whom rent is due. He desires to abolish the landlord, not in the interests of religion--I speak now of the peasantry, and not the clergy--and not in the interests of patriotism, for if a Dublin Parliament were to cost him sixpence, the priests themselves could hardly drag him to the poll; but purely and simply to avoid any further payment of what he regards as the accursed impost on the land.

Phillip Fahy, the leading light of Carnaun, near Athenry, is exactly typical of rural Irish Patriotism. "Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill?

What does it mane, at all, at all? Not one o' us knows more than that lump o' stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin', for that's all we hear? We'll be obliged av ye could explain it a thrifle, for sorra one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithers.h.i.+n says 'Howld yer whist,' says he 'till ye see what'll happen,' says he. Will we get the bit o' ground widout rint, yer honner's glory?" Mr. Tynan, of Monivea, said that his landlord was liberal and good, and admitted that his land was not too highly rented, but, said he, "We have no objection to do better still." The run on the Irish Post Office Savings Banks at once ill.u.s.trates the patriotism of the people and their confidence in the proposed Dublin Parliament. It was well known and understood, so far as the poorer cla.s.ses are capable of understanding anything, that the floating balance of the Post Office Banks would const.i.tute the only working capital of the Irish Legislature. Here was an opportunity for self-sacrifice. Here was a chance of manifesting the faith animating the lovers of their country. But at the same time it was made known that the Post Office would pa.s.s from the British control to that of the Irish people's chosen representatives. It might have been supposed that the electors would rejoice thereat with exceeding great joy, and that in order to show their trust in an Irish Parliament they would increase their deposits, and at considerable personal inconvenience refrain from withdrawals. Nothing of the kind.

The "aspirations of a people" were at once strongly defined, but this time not in the direction of patriotism. It availed not to urge upon them the argument that the four millions of the Post Office Savings Banks were absolutely necessary to the successful administration of an Irish Parliament. In patriotic Dublin the run on the Post Office was tremendous. The master of a small sub-office told me that the withdrawals over his counter had for some time amounted to 200 per week, and that they were increasing to 70 per day. There was not enough gold in Dublin to meet the demands, and cash was being forwarded from London. The patriots who had no money deposited in the Post Office made no secret of their indignation, stigmatising their fellow-countrymen as recreants and traitors, but without perceptible effect. The Dublin Savings Bank became the trusted depositary of the money. This inst.i.tution is managed by an a.s.sociation of Dublin merchants, not for profit, but for the encouragement of thrift, and the confidence reposed in them was doubtless due to the fact that the directors, on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, had publicly announced their intention, on the bill becoming law, to pay twenty s.h.i.+llings in the pound and at once to close the bank. The patriot depositors were not deterred by this announcement, nor by the directors' letter to Mr. Gladstone, in which they declared that their determination to wind up the affairs of the bank was due to the fact that in the interest of their depositors they felt themselves unable to accept the security of an Irish Legislature. Patriotism would surely have resented this imputation. But Nationalism in its present phase is nothing more than selfish cupidity and l.u.s.t of gain. This is made abundantly manifest by the freely-uttered sentiments of all cla.s.ses of the Nationalist party. The first answer I received to an inquiry as to what advantages would be derived from a patriot Parliament was elicited from an ancient Dubliner, whose extraordinary credulity was equal to anything afterwards met with in the rural districts:--"The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay sojers to grind us down, we'll put into our own pockets, av you plaze." The complaint about the British Government veto on Irish mining, which I fondly believed to be sporadic, proved to be chronic, universal. Here again the notion of easily acquired wealth was the impulse, and not the pure and self-denying influence of patriotism. "The British Government won't allow us to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get the bill every man can take a shpade, an', begorra! can dig what he wants. The Phaynix Park is all cram-full o' coal that the Castle folks won't allow us to dig, bad scran to them! Whin we get the bill we'll sink them mines an' send the Castle to blazes." The coal under the Phoenix Park is a matter of pious belief with every back-slum Dubliner. The gold of the Wicklow mountains is proverbial all over Ireland. There is not a n.o.bleman's demesne that does not cover untold wealth in some shape or form. It may be gold, silver, copper, lead, or only coal or iron. But it is there, and the people of the neighbourhood want an Irish Parliament in order that the treasures may be turned into money. The more intelligent Nationalists foster these beliefs, although they know them to be without foundation. They know that the treasures do not exist in paying quant.i.ties, and also that if they did exist their fellow-countrymen are too lazy to dig them up.

The Nationalist orators never rely on patriotic sentiment. They promise the land for nothing. Mr. William O'Brien has unceasingly offered as a bribe the promise of prairie rents for the farmers, but Tim Healy went one better when at Limerick he said that "The people of this country never ought to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." Well might Sir George Trevelyan say that Irish agitators have done much to demoralise the country, and that in many parts of Ireland they gained their livelihood by criminal agitation. The same authority tells us that "an Irish Parliament will be independent of the Parliament of this country, but will be dependent on the votes of the small farmers, who have been taught that rent is robbery." That is a precise statement of the position so far as the agricultural voters are concerned. Their patriotism is nothing more nor less than a sure and certain hope of pecuniary advantage. The green flag of Ireland has no charms for them. The ancient glories of Hibernia are sung to them in vain. They care not for the Onward march to Freedom. They will make no sacrifices on the shrine of their country. The subscriptions furnished by the Irish peasantry for the furtherance of the cause amount to almost nothing, although extorted partly by compulsion and partly by the hope of future profit. The following facts will show how spontaneous is their patriotism. At a Sunday meeting at Gurteen in 1887, the Very Reverend Canon O'Donohoe in the chair, it was resolved, "That a collection for the defence of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien be made during the ensuing week in this locality, and that not less than sixpence be accepted from any person. _Anyone not subscribing will be considered not in sympathy with the Branch._" Those only who know Ireland well will be able to appreciate the terrible significance of the last sentence of this resolution, which for the information of the peasantry was made public in the Nationalist _Sligo Champion_. A similar incentive to patriotism seems to have been required by the Kilshelan Branch, for at another Sunday Meeting, the Reverend Father Dunphy in the chair, it was unanimously resolved, "That all members who do not pay in subscriptions on or before the next meeting, which will be held on the last Sunday of this month, shall have their names published and posted on the chapel gate for two consecutive Sundays."

This quotation is from the _Munster Express_, published in Limerick.

At a meeting reported by the _Kerry Sentinel_ "the conduct of several members, who had not renewed their subscriptions, was strongly condemned, the reverend president, Father T. Enright, giving orders to have a list, with their names, sent to him before the next meeting."

The chapel doors are used as instruments of boycotting. The priest sits in judgment on all who are not sufficiently patriotic. The people are compelled to subscribe to the cause, whether they like it or not.

These cases could be multiplied to infinity. They not only give an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the conduct of the Irish clergy in political affairs, but they also furnish a curious commentary on the enthusiasm which is supposed to mark the Aspirations of a People, who, as Mr.

Gladstone might say are "rightly struggling to be free." I have conversed with hundreds of Irish farmers and I never yet met one who was willing to sacrifice a sixpence on "the altar of his country," or to trust an Irish Parliament with his own property, or to invest a penny on purely Irish security. He loves his ease, no man likes it better, and No Rent means less exertion. Mr. O'Doherty, of County Donegal, a Catholic Home Ruler, said the landlords were all right now under compulsion, but what the tenantry demanded was to be released entirely from the landlords' yoke. The farmers, he said, cared nothing for Home Rule, but the Nationalists had preached prairie value, and the people expected to drive out the landowners and Protestants. Mr.

John Cook, of Londonderry, a Protestant Home Ruler and a man of culture, did not claim patriotism for the Nationalists, and unconsciously put his finger on the real incentive when he said:--"The landlords will be wronged under the present bill. It is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and will do more harm than good. England should have a voice in fixing the price of the land, for if the matter be left to the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants were buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found that their two-and-three-quarter per cent. interest came lower than their rent. But they have quite ceased to buy, because they expect the Irish Legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land for nothing." Patriotism had meanwhile received another sop. Mr. Healy advised the farmers to think twice before they bought their land, and hinted that their patience was likely to be well rewarded. Father J.

Corcoran at Mullahoran, when consulted by a body of tenant farmers whose landlord offered to sell, distinctly advised them not to purchase, and gave a practical instruction on the subject, in which he endeavoured to prove that seventeen or eighteen years' purchase was at present unworthy of consideration, and advising the greatest caution in buying at all under present circ.u.mstances. The farmers' conception of Nationalism is plunder and confiscation. They vote for Home Rule because they thereby expect to make money, to become freeholders, landlords themselves, in short. They are taught that they have an inherent right to the land, and that an Irish Parliament will restore them their own. Father B. O'Hagan, addressing a meeting in company with William O'Brien, said:--"We have two cla.s.ses of landlords, in brief. We have the royal scoundrels who took the land of our forefathers. I ask any of those n.o.ble ruffians to show me the t.i.tle by which they lay claim to the soil of my ancestors. Then we have the landlords who have purchased their estates in the Land Courts. But they bought stolen goods, and they knew that the land was stolen. We must get rid of the landlords." Paddy is perfectly safe. The landlords who claim in descent and those who buy in the open market are equally denounced. Let him support the Nationalist party, and the land becomes his own. He does so, and his motive is by the unthinking called patriotism and by Mr. Gladstone the Aspirations of a People.

There are of course other cla.s.ses of Nationalists, but in comparison with the immense preponderance of rural voters they do not count for much. Mr. McGregor, of Anglesea Street, Dublin, once an earnest Gladstonian, said:--"The corner-men are Home Rulers because they want to spend what they never earned, and the farmers because they hope to get the land for nothing." The Dublin hotel-keepers are mostly Home Rulers, and the proprietor of Jury's, next door to the proposed House in College Green, is supposed to be consumed with patriotic fire. The hotel has recently been refitted. The Dublin shopkeepers, "those of the largest size," are strangely lacking in patriotism, and mostly support the Union. Patriotism is claimed for the Nationalist members, who, according to Nationalist sheets, were lifted from bog-holes, tripe shops, and small whiskey shops to decide the destinies of empires, to revel in comparative luxury, to enjoy a certain social distinction, to exchange their native bogs for the British metropolis, and to draw a salary beyond their wildest dreams. These questionable gentlemen, with the horse's tongue and cow's tail cutters, the firebrand priests and landlord-shooters, the moonlight marauders who shoot old women and children in the legs, burn the haystacks of their neighbours, refuse coffins and decent burial for the dead, apply the fiendish tortures of boycotting to innocent women and children, refusing them the means of subsistence, and poisoning their water supply with human filth--these _are_ patriots. Only their patriotism must cost them nothing, It must be cultivated at the expense of others. The patriots subscribe only under compulsion, and yet hope to make a profit by the transaction. As of a certain party of old, it may be said of them, "License they mean when they cry Liberty." Plunder they mean when they cry Patriotism. The sober and industrious portion of the Irish people, the pick of every part of Ireland, being opposed to Nationalism, are denied the virtue of patriotism. The merchants and manufacturers of Dublin and Belfast, the leading professional men of Ireland, the most learned scholars of her great University, her great soldiers, White, Wolseley, Roberts, her greatest living authors, the whole of her Protestant clergy of whatever sect, with their congregations, the pith and marrow of everything that is strong, stable, cultured, enlightened, prescient, must be p.r.o.nounced unpatriotic--if Nationalism is Patriotism. Contrary to all human experience and to the course and const.i.tution of nature, the people of England are asked to believe that love of their native land and desire to do the best for the commonweal, are the sole possession of the ignorant and rowdy cla.s.ses of Irishmen, and notwithstanding the undeniable fact that Nationalist Irishmen of every colour accuse the Nationalist members of self-seeking, and of absolute indifference to everything: outside their own interests, we are asked to give to them exclusively the honour due to men who sacrifice all for their country and care for nothing but her welfare. Gladstonians themselves, in the deepest depths of their credulity, cannot in their hearts believe in Nationalist patriotism, except, perhaps, such as that of Mr. Kelly, of Athenry, who said, "I'm a Home Ruler out and out. The counthry's within a stone-throw of h.e.l.l, and we may as well be in it altogether."

Birmingham, August 11th.

No. 60.--LAND HUNGER: ITS CAUSE, EFFECT, AND REMEDY.

That Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism has been demonstrated by an appeal to admitted facts. The farmers hope to be relieved from payment of rent, the labourers hope to be employed in the mining of treasure at remunerative wages, the agitators hope for place and power, and everyone who has nothing hopes in the general confusion to make off with something. There is, in short, a shrewd popular notion that the foundering of the British s.h.i.+p of state would yield good wreckage. The false lights have done excellent service. Dillon, Davitt, O'Brien.

Healy, and the rest of the would-be wreckers are s.h.i.+vering with excitement at the prospect of the crash which they fondly believe to be imminent. The helmsman is under their orders--will he be heaved overboard before he has done his work? If so, farewell to hope of plunder, farewell to hope of religions domination, to freehold farms for nothing, to gold mines, to every hope that made life pleasant, to all the fatuous beliefs that are the basis of Irish Nationalism. It has been shown that "patriotic" subscriptions could only be raised by threats, that the names of non-subscribers were posted on chapel gates, that resolutions fixing the minimum were pa.s.sed, with a rider to the effect that persons not subscribing would be considered "out of sympathy," and that this fund was for the defence of the patriots Dillon and O'Brien, who afterwards ran away. The rush of the "patriot"

depositors on the Post Office Savings Banks so soon as it was known that in the event of Home Rule the floating balance would const.i.tute the working capital of the new Parliament, and would therefore be in the hands of brother "patriots," has been adduced as a fair measure of patriotic sincerity, and endless minor examples might have been given.

We might have mentioned Delany, the princ.i.p.al clothier and outfitter of intensely patriotic Limerick, who had not a yard of Irish tweed in his stores; or the Dungannon folks, who think foul scorn of their own coal, and persist in buying the English product at double the cost; or Mr. Timony, of "patriotic Donegal," might have been quoted.

"Irishmen," said the great draper, "will not wear Donegal tweed. But for England we should have no market at all." The patriots will not "part." "I'm sorry for you," said the kind old lady. "_How much_ are you sorry?" said the tramp. Tried by this test, Irish patriotism comes out very small. If "patriot" members had to live on the voluntary offerings of their const.i.tuencies, the trade would expire of inanition. The members would return to their bogs, their tripe shops, their shebeens, and patriotism would become a lost art. Irishmen will applaud with enthusiasm. They like a red-hot patriotic speech. But, like the crowd listening to the harp and fiddle at the street corner, they begin to shuffle off when the bag comes round.

Irish land hunger is easy to understand and simple to define. The bulk of the population are agricultural, and closely wedded to custom.

Their fathers lived on the land and by the land, and they expect to do likewise. _Saeva paupertas, et avitus apto c.u.m lare fundus._ Their ideas of existence are inseparably connected with the land. Whatever knowledge they have relates to the land. Their farming skill is very limited; indeed, it may almost be said that they have none beyond that possessed by savages--but it is their only possession. They have no turn for mechanics. The rural Irishman is uneducated, and knows little beyond what he sees around him. So far as his experience goes, to be without land is to be without the one means of livelihood. The English small farmer is differently situated. If farming will not pay he has other resources. He can migrate to fifty towns having factories or great public works. And besides this, the Saxon is not crippled by an ignorant conservatism and a congenital inability to adapt himself to changed circ.u.mstances. Paddy is content with little, if he have his ease. He loves to put in the seed and then to sit down and wait for the crop, varying the proceedings with fairs and festive gatherings.

Such is his conception of life. The ding-dong regularity of factory work does not suit him, so he clings to the land, which provides him with a bare subsistence, and that is all he wants. No ambition to be more luxurious than his father troubles him at all. Short spells of work, and long spells of play, are ensured to the fortunate holder of land. This is Paddy's conception of Paradise. Suppose the land held were at first sufficient to maintain his family. The boys grow up, and, according to custom, the paternal farm is divided, in the next generation again subdivided, until at last the amount of land remaining to each family is insufficient for its maintenance. Then the district becomes congested. The poverty of the people is attributed to the landlords, who are denounced as non-resident, notwithstanding the demonstrations of an affectionate tenantry, who now and then shoot one or two, _pour encourarger les autres_. If the people have food they have little or no money. The agitator comes and promises No Rent, the opening of gold mines and mighty factories, paying liberal wages, under the fostering wing of an Irish Parliament. The people are ignorant and credulous. They are, however, certain as to their own poverty, and they desire a change. The Roman Catholics regard themselves as the chosen people, the true sons of the soil, but they see that most of the great landowners are Protestant, that the Protestant farmers often hold uncommonly good land, and that if these were once dispossessed the righteous might again flourish as green bay trees. For while Papal Ireland is largely rock and bog, the heretical portion is reclaimed and tilled, the bogs drained, the primeval boulders rolled away, broken up, and made into fences. All this is tempting. Irish land hunger is foreshadowed in the story of Naboth and his vineyard.

And Irish land hunger is largely responsible for Irish rents. Friends and neighbours--aye, even relatives near as brothers and sisters, compete against each other, and eagerly force up the price. Every Irish land agent will tell you of underhand intrigue in connection with land. Not only do brothers secretly strive to obtain advantage over each other by means of higher bidding, but bribery is tried. Mr.

Robert Hare, of the Dublin Board of Works, said:--"My father was an agent, and on one occasion he was weighing the respective claims of two brothers to a piece of land which was about to become vacant and perhaps considering their respective offers, when one sent him a ten-pound note. He cut it in two and returned one-half, with an intimation that on receiving a receipt he would forward the other." I never met anyone in Ireland who would not readily admit that high rents were mainly due to the action of the tenants themselves, who, being actuated by what is called land-hunger, which is nothing more in the majority of cases than the necessity to live, had in their desperation bid more than the land was worth. Mr. Thomas Manley, of Trim, County Meath, said:--"The tenant farmer has cried himself up, and the Nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most industrious, most self-sacrificing fellow in the world. But he isn't.

Not a bit of it. The landlords and their agents have over and over again been shot for rack-renting when the rents had been forced up by secret compet.i.tion among neighbours and even relations. Ask any living Irish farmer if I am right, and he will say, Yes, ten times yes." As an Irish farmer and the son of an Irish farmer, living for sixty years on Irish farms, and from his occupation as a horse-dealer, claiming to have an intimate acquaintance with the whole of Ireland, and with almost every farmer who can breed and rear a horse, Mr.

Manley is worth a hearing. Continuing, in the presence of several intelligent Irishmen, some of them Home Rulers, but all agreeing with the speaker, Mr. Manley said:--"Rents have been forced up by people going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. Landlords are human; agents, if possible, still more human. They handed over the land to the highest bidder. What more natural? The farmers offered more than the land could pay. But why curse the landlords for what was their own deliberate act?" Mr. Manley's knowledge of England enabled him to say that "the Irish farmer is much better off than the English, Scotch, or Welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but also in the matter of soil." The legal point is demonstrable. Let us see how the Irish tenant stands. The disinclination of the Irish for factory work, as exemplified in the closing of the Galway jute factory, because of irregularity of attendance, and the refusal of the starving peasantry of congested Donegal and Connemara to accept regular employment in the thread factory of Dunbar, MacMaster and Co., notwithstanding the most tempting inducements, as set forth in my letters from Ireland, has strangled enterprise, except in the North.

The ceaseless agitation of the revolutionary party has given rise to a feeling of insecurity which deters capitalists from investing money in Ireland. And it is only fair to say that a large majority of the most intelligent men of every political colour concur in attributing much of the poverty of Ireland to unrestricted Free Trade. Thus a variety of causes have created land hunger, with its resulting land clamour, which has brought about extraordinary legislation--extraordinary because going far beyond the principles recognised by Republican America, which in the first article of its Const.i.tution draws the line thus:--"_No State shall pa.s.s any law impairing the obligation of contracts._" Well might Lord Salisbury, in extending the Land Purchase Act, carefully dissociate the Conservative party from the principle of interference with free contract in the open market. In England a thing is worth what it will fetch. It is not so in Ireland.

A tenant can never be evicted unless a whole year's rent is due. The landlord might want the land for himself or for his son, but he cannot have it. The tenant must have six months' notice of eviction, and when actually evicted can recover possession by paying what he owes, and in that case the landlord becomes liable to the tenant for the crops on the land, and for the profits he (the landlord) _might_ have made. In America the length of notice preceding eviction varies from three days to thirty, the latter only in the State of Maine. Yet in Ireland, where we hear so much of brutal evictions, six months' notice is required, a year's rent being due, this boon having been conferred by a "Coercion"

Government. An Irish tenant even when voluntarily leaving his farm must be compensated by the landlord for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, or must be permitted to sell his improvements to the incoming tenant. The tenant-right of a small farm is sometimes a surprising sum. The moonlighting case I investigated at Newcastlewest, Co. Limerick, arose from a tenant-right transaction, William Quirke having bid 590 for the tenant-right of forty-nine acres formerly held by J. Dore who was selling, as against 400 bid by Dore's cousin.

Quirke and three of his family were therefore shot in the legs, by way of impressing the advisability of joining in the Onward march to Freedom. But although the tenant is settled on the land for ever, and, so long as he owes less than a year's rent, cannot be molested, it must not be supposed that the rent he agreed to is unchangeable. Suppose the tenant to be paying a judicial rent, which is decided by three persons, one of them a lawyer, the other two acting respectively in the interests of landlord and tenant, having examined and valued the farm.

a.s.sume that the tenant gets more than a year behindhand. The landlord desires to evict. Even then the tenant, by applying for another "Fair Rent," can stay eviction. But while the rent may be lowered, the landlord can never raise it under any circ.u.mstances. The law is decidely one-sided. Leases may be broken. All leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the pa.s.sing of the Land Act of 1887 may go to Court, have their contracts broken, and a judicial rent fixed. No countervailing advantage is given to the landlords. When a tenant's valuation does not exceed 50, the Court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of any debt, whether for beef, bread, groceries, clothes, or whiskey, is empowered to stay eviction, can allow the debtor to pay by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment without limit. To the average British mind this will smack of over-legislation, and serious Irishmen make the same complaint. And still, to quote Father Mahony, of Cork, "still the Irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel English yoke." The fact is, he is almost killed with kindness. He is weighed down by the mult.i.tude of benefactions. He reminds you of the tame sparrow you once suffocated by overfeeding. So much has been done for him that he naturally expects more, and instead of being grateful he grumbles more than ever. He regards Mr. Gladstone as having acted under compulsion, and as being an opportunist. The peasantry of Ireland have no respect for the Grand Old Man. "Shure, we bate the bills out iv him. Shure, he never gave us anythin' till we kicked it out iv his skin. Divil thank him for doin' what we ordhered him to do."

But perhaps the Tory Land Purchase Acts are most promising in, the direction of finality. Lord Ashbourne's Act, as it was called (1885), conferred on Irish tenants opportunities of purchasing their holdings of quite an exceptional kind, and its scope and advantages were enormously increased under the Land Purchase Act pa.s.sed in 1891. If a tenant wishes to buy his holding and arranges with his landlord as to terms, he can change his position from an ordinary rentpayer into that of a payer of an annuity, terminable in forty-nine years, and actually less in amount than the rent! Most Irish landlords are willing to take less than twenty years' purchase, but the tenants are by their leaders advised not to buy. Otherwise the Government is prepared to advance the necessary purchase money, to be repaid at the rate of four per cent. per annum, which covers both princ.i.p.al and interest. Suppose the tenant's rent to be 50, and that he agreed to buy at the seventeen years' purchase so strongly discountenanced by the priest quoted in my last. His rent or rather the annual payment subst.i.tuted for rent, would amount to 34, being a reduction of thirty-two per cent. If he bought at fifteen years' purchase, rent 50, he would only pay 30 a year, a reduction of forty per cent. If he bought at twenty years, rent 50, he would have 40 a year to pay, being a reduction of twenty per cent. In forty-nine years the holding would belong to him, or to his children. In any case he must largely benefit. His rent is lower, his share in the owners.h.i.+p is always becoming larger, and, if he chooses, he can at any time sell his interest in the concern. Mr.

Palmer, of Tuam, said that those who had purchased under this Act were happy and prosperous. Lord Shannon's tenants bought at twelve years'

purchase. In other words they exchanged their rent for one-half the amount, payable to Government, the land to be their own in forty-nine years. Lord Lansdowne's tenants agreed to buy at eighteen years'

purchase, all arrears to be forgiven on payment of half a year's rent.

These buyers are quiet and apparently contented. Their payments are regular, and if they were left alone they would doubtless continue in the path of rect.i.tude. But the agitators, who find nick-names for everything, have already begun to call this repayment of purchase-money a Tribute to England; and the past history of Irish leaders leads honest Irishmen, as well as Englishmen, to the conviction that, once an Irish Parliament were established, with an Irish constabulary under its rule, a No Tribute campaign would ensue, which would lead to deplorable results. The privileges of Irish tenants are far more numerous than I have s.p.a.ce to indicate, but perhaps enough has been said to give a clear idea of the chief causes and effects of land hunger in Ireland.

The remedy, in the opinion of many advanced and enlightened Home Rulers, must come from a Tory Government. From the mult.i.tude of counsellors I met in the thirty-two counties of Ireland, I will select two who represent the vast majority of able men of every political party. Mr. Thomas Manley said:--"Settle the land question, reform the Poor Laws and the Grand Jury laws, and reclaim the land, which would pay ten per cent." Mr. Mason, of Mullingar, said:--"The whole agitation would be knocked on the head by the introduction of a severe land measure. Previous legislation has been very severe, and I do not say that a further measure would be just and equitable. I merely say that the people do not want Home Rule, but that they want the advantages which they are told will accrue from Home Rule." And so said everyone.

To settle the land question is to settle everything. Religious animosity would be silenced by self-interest. The operation of the Land Purchase Act has undoubtedly done much to turn the people using its provisions into good Conservatives--law-abiding and law-supporting, as having a stake in the country. The people have not the land for nothing but they look forward to its becoming honestly their own, and meanwhile they enjoy the security insured by the Government of England. In any attempt to settle this great problem, a Conservative Government would probably be largely supported by the landlords themselves, while the rank and file of Ireland would look with respect and confidence on any bill bearing the honoured name of Balfour. But how shall we decide the scope and character of such a final Land Bill? I do not hesitate to say that it must contain a very strong infusion of the compulsory element. The great measure of 1891 is generous to a fault, but it is voluntary, and the result is that the tenants who give greatest trouble--the poor, idle, ignorant dupes of a scheming priesthood and a corrupt political conspiracy--never come under its benefits, because they unquestioningly accept the advice given them to wait until an Irish Parliament lets them have the land for nothing.

Compulsion is not required for the landlords half so much as it is for the tenants. The conclusion arrived at may be stated in a few words.

Perhaps it may be worthy the consideration of our brilliant and far-seeing Unionist leaders:--

The Land Purchase Act, 1891, should be amended by a Bill providing (1) That the existing Land Commission shall be strengthened in order to form a Court to which either Landlords or Tenants shall have the right to apply for an order of the Court placing them under the provisions of the Act of 1891, or such extension of that Act as may hereafter be made. (2) It should be the duty of the Court to inquire into the relations of landlord and tenant, the condition of the estate and of the tenants, and such other circ.u.mstances as may in the wisdom of the Court seem necessary. (3) If the Court decides to issue an order, the parties shall at once be placed in the same position as if they had entered into a mutual agreement under the Land Purchase Act, 1891; but it shall be the duty of the Court to fix the number of years' purchase; and it shall have power either to restrict or to enlarge the number of holdings over which its order shall take effect.

This is offered as the mere germ of a suggestion. I am familiar with the arguments that may be brought against it. For the most part they can be urged with equal effect against the whole system of interference with that freedom of contract which prevails in England and Scotland, but which, as I have pointed out, has already been destroyed in Ireland. What I claim is that there _must_ be a means of defeating such a conspiracy to make the law inoperative as that practised--to the grave detriment of Irish tenants' interests--by the omnipresent agencies of the National League, ever since the Unionist party set itself to solve the agrarian sources of Irish discontent.

Birmingham, August 14th.

No. 61.--CLERICAL DOMINATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Those who play at bowls must expect rubbers. The Roman priesthood of Ireland having a.s.sumed the manipulation of Irish politics, have laid themselves open to mundane criticism. Said Mr. Gladstone:--"It is the peculiarity of Roman theology that by thrusting itself into the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a frequent theme of political discussion." Priestly pretensions to authority are without limit. The Catholic clergy of Ireland claim the right to coerce the laity in political matters, themselves remaining exempt from public criticism. They also claim to be exempt from civil jurisdiction, and to have the right of overruling the law of the land, with every moral obligation, when clas.h.i.+ng with the interests of the Church. They distinctly teach that every political question is a question of morals, and that to vote against the priest's instructions is a deadly sin. Such being a few of the claims advanced by the Irish priesthood, let us see on what rests the hope of these extraordinary demands being recognised. A.M. Sullivan, a Roman Catholic Nationalist M.P., says:--"Of all Catholic nations or countries in the world--the Tyrol alone excepted--Ireland is perhaps the most Papal, the most ultramontane. In Ireland religious conviction--what may be called active Catholicism--marks the population, enters into their daily life and thought and action. The churches are crowded as well by men as by women, and in every sacrament and ceremony of their religion partic.i.p.ation is extensive and earnest. Reverence for the sacerdotal character is so deep and strong as to be called superst.i.tion by observers who belong to a different faith; and devotion to the Pope, attachment to the Roman See, is probably more intense in Ireland than in any other part of the habitable globe, the Leonine city itself not excluded." In other words, the Irish are more Roman than the Romans themselves. Here we have on the one hand the claims of the Romish priesthood, and on the other the disposition of the Irish people. But as the alleged claims will to the majority of Englishmen appear monstrous and incredible, it becomes necessary to prove that these claims are actually made.

The fall of Parnell brought the clergy into striking prominence. The powerful personality of the Irish leader, his great popularity, and his determination to rule alone, had to some extent forced the Church into the background. Parnell once removed, the Church at once aimed at undivided rule, directing all her energies to this end mercilessly and without scruple. Her instruments were worthy of the work. The modern Irish priest is usually low-bred, vulgar, and ignorant. The priest of Lever's novels, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with animal spirits, full of _bonhomie_, sparkling with wit and abounding with jovial good-nature, is nowhere to be found. The men of the olden time were educated in France, and by rubbing against the cultured professors of Douai or Saint Omer, had acquired a polish, a breadth of view, a _savoir faire_, denied to the illiterate hordes of Maynooth. The olden priest was loyal, just as cultured Irishmen who have travelled, whether in America, England, or elsewhere, are loyal and averse to Home Rule. The modern priest, usually the son of an Irishman such as visits England at harvest time, brought up amidst squalor and filth, is in full sympathy with the limited ideas of the peasantry among whom he was reared. The conversation of his parents and a.s.sociates would relate to the burden of the Saxon yoke, and his surroundings would perpetually re-echo the stories of Ireland's wrongs and woes. Any literature he might absorb would be a priest-written history of Ireland, with the rebel doggerel of 1798 and the more seductive sedition of later years. At Maynooth he meets a crowd of students like himself, crammed to the throat with his own prejudices, viewing everything from the same standpoint. He returns to the people a full blown ecclesiastic, saturated with a sense of his own importance and the absolute supremacy of the Church he represents; knowing nothing of mankind outside his own narrow sphere, profoundly ignorant of the world's political systems, and intensely inimical to England. Average Keltic priests fully bear out the description furnished by a loyal priest of Donegal, who, on alluding to their social status and Maynooth course, said:--"They are merely shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years."

As to their exceptional claims. The att.i.tude of omniscience and omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy.

Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared that there is no dividing line between religion and politics. Dr. Walsh has also laid down the dictum that, "As priests and independent of all human organisations, we have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide our people in every proceeding where the interests of Catholics as well as the interests of Irish nationality are involved." This prelate rescinded the wholesome rule enforced by his predecessors, forbidding the clergy to take part in political demonstrations. He went further. He ordered that at all political conventions an _ex-officio_ vote should be given to the priests. It is in view of this fact that the Unionists of Ireland not unreasonably declare that under a Home Rule Bill the Roman Catholic clergy would become endowed with civil privileges which would make them absolute rulers of Ireland. It may be urged that Bishop Walsh is discredited at Rome, and that therefore his utterances may be somewhat discounted. But what of the new Irish Cardinal, Archbishop Logue, of Armagh? He agrees with Dr. Walsh, and with reference to the Parnellite split, thus delivers himself:--"We are face to face with a grave disobedience to ecclesiastical authority!

The doctrines of the present day are calculated to wean the people from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and _to let the people use their own judgment_!" Surely nothing could be clearer or more uncompromising than this. Bishop Nulty, alluding to the refusal of Mr. Redmond's political party to accept without question the political commands of the Church, thus hinted at the consequences to recalcitrant Papists:--"It is exclusively through us that the clean and holy oblation of the ma.s.s is offered daily for the living and the dead on the thousands of altars throughout our country.