Reply of the Liberals to the Tory Reform Bill--State of Ireland--The
Protestant Establishment--Resolution proposed by Mr. Gladstone--Decay
of Protestant feeling in England--Protestant character of the Irish
Church--The Upas Tree--Mr. Gladstone's Irish policy--General effect
on Ireland of the Protestant Establishment--Voltaire's
opinion--Imperfect results--The character of the Protestant
gentry--Nature of the proposed change--Sprung on England as a
surprise--Mr. Gladstone's resolutions carried--Fall of Disraeli's
Government.
[Sidenote: IRISH POLICY OF MR. GLADSTONE]
Disraeli, in appropriating Parliamentary Reform, obliged the
Liberals to look about them for another battle-cry at the next
election--something popular and plausible which would touch the passions
of the constituencies. The old subjects were worn out or disposed of. It
had become necessary to start new game. The genuine Radical desires to
make a new world by a reconstruction of society. He has his eye always
on one or other of the old institutions, which he regards as an obstacle
to progress. There are, therefore, at all times, a number of questions
which are gradually 'ripening,' as it is called, but which wait to be
practically dealt with till the opportunity presents itself. Among these
the Liberal leader had now to make his choice. A small advance would not
answer. Disraeli had ventured a long and audacious step. The other side
must reply with a second and a longer if the imagination was to be
effectively awakened.
[Sidenote: FENIANISM]
[Sidenote: WEAKENED INFLUENCE OF PROTESTANTISM]
The Established Church of England, the Land Laws, the House of Lords,
perhaps the Crown, were eventually to be thrown into the crucible; but
the nation was not yet prepared for an assault on either of these. The
weak point was found in Ireland, which at all times had been the
favourite plaything of English faction. Three millions of Irish had fled
across the Atlantic to escape from famine since the failure of the
potato. Some had gone of their own wills, some had been roughly expelled
from their homes. With few exceptions, they had borne the cost of their
own exportation. Those who went first sent home money to bring out their
families and friends, and the economists had congratulated themselves
that the Irish difficulty was at last disposed of, at no expense to the
British taxpayer. A few insignificant persons, who understood the Irish
character, knew too well that the congratulations were premature. If the
poor Irish were really our fellow-subjects, these persons thought that
some effort should have been made to soften their expulsion, and to
provide or at least to offer them homes in the vast colonial territories
which then belonged to us. Past efforts in that direction, indeed, had
not been encouraging. For several generations we had poured shiploads of
Irish into the West Indies. Scarcely a survivor of Celtic blood is now
to be found in those islands. It would have been something, however, to
have shown that we were generously anxious to bear our share in the
undeserved calamity which had fallen on an ill-used people, and to try
to repair the efforts of centuries of negligence. If we left them to
their own resources without regret, with an avowed confession that we
were glad to be rid of them, Irish disaffection would become more
intense than ever. We did so leave them. They streamed across to the
United States, carrying hatred of England along with them, while the
walls of the deserted villages in Connaught preached revenge to those
who were left at home. The exiles throve in their new land--a fresh
evidence, if they needed more, that English domination had been the
cause of their miseries. They multiplied, and became a factor in
American political life. They fought, and fought well, in the American
Civil War. When the Civil War was over, they hoped for a war with
England, and tried to kindle it in Canada. The 'Alabama' question having
been settled peacefully, they failed in their immediate purpose; but
none the less they were animated with an all-pervading purpose of
revenge; and there were many thousands of them who had escaped the
Southern bullets who were ready for any desperate adventure. An invading
force was to cross the Atlantic, while Ireland organised itself in
secret societies to receive them as it did to receive the French in
1797. Chester Castle and the Fenian rebellion of 1867 are not yet
forgotten even in these days of short memories and excited hopes. The
rising was abortive. It failed, as Irish rebellions have so often
failed, because the Irish people trusted in their numbers and neglected
to make serious preparations. The American general who came over to take
the command had been told that he would find ten thousand men drilled
and armed. He did not find five hundred, and he left the enterprise in
contempt. The scattered risings which followed were easily suppressed,
and were suppressed with gentleness. The exhortation of a leading
Liberal journal to make an example of the rebels in the field, because
executions afterwards were inconvenient, was happily not attended to.
But the leniency with which the leading insurgents were treated was
construed into a confession of weakness. The rebellious spirit was fed
from America, and detached acts of violence, attempted rescues of
prisoners, and blowing up of gaols showed that Ireland was as unsubdued
as ever. The great Liberal champion saw the occasion which he required.
The Clerkenwell explosion, he said, had brought the Irish question
within the range of practical politics, and in this extraordinary
acknowledgment invited an inflammable people to persevere in outrage if
they desired to secure their rights. He declared in a memorable speech
that the cause of Irish wretchedness had been Protestant Ascendency.
Protestant Ascendency was the Irish upas-tree, with its three branches,
the Church, the land, and the education. The deadly growth once cut
down, the animosity would end, and the English lion and the Irish lamb
would lie down together in peace. That to disarm the garrison was a
likely mode of reconciling an unwilling people to a connection which
they detest, was an expectation not in accordance with general human
experience; still less when it was confessedly recommended as a reward
of insurrection. But the Irish question was ingeniously selected as a
counterstroke to Disraeli's Reform Bill. Had Disraeli but left Reform to
its owners the Liberals would have been provided with work at home and
have left Ireland alone. But the deed was done, and many circumstances
combined to suggest to the eminent statesman who had discovered the
secret of Irish disaffection that here was the proper field for his
genius, and that he was peculiarly the person to put his hand to the
plough. The Irish Church had long been a scandal to Liberal sentiment,
and Disraeli himself had denounced it. The land was the favourite
subject of Radical declamation. Land-owning in Ireland showed under
its least favourable aspect, and could there be assaulted at best
advantage. It was true that the control of Ireland was vital to the
safety of Great Britain, and that the Protestants there were the only
part of the population whose loyalty could be depended on. Until recent
years the Protestant feeling in England and Scotland would have
forbidden a revolutionary change avowedly intended to weaken the
Protestant settlement; but the extended franchise, either already
conceded or made inevitable by Disraeli's Bill, would throw four-fifths
of the representation of Ireland into Nationalist hands, and the
adhesion of such a phalanx would give the party which could secure
it an overwhelming preponderance, while the Protestant prejudices
which had served hitherto as a check were wearing away.
Sixty years ago the British nation adhered almost unanimously to the
traditions of the Reformation. It had grown to its present greatness as
a Protestant power. The Pope was still the Man of Sin. Roman doctrine,
either pure or modified into Anglicanism, was regarded with suspicion,
aversion, or contempt. Conversions were unheard of, and the few
surviving hereditary Catholics were unobtrusive and politically ciphers.
Catholic Emancipation in restoring them to power restored them at the
same time to social consequence. The Liberals who had advocated that
great measure, historians, statesmen, and philosophers, broke with the
principles of which their predecessors had once been the staunchest
advocates, changed front, and traduced the Reformation itself, to which
Liberalism owed its existence. While Macaulay and Buckle were cursing
Cranmer, the Oxford Movement made its way among the clergy, was welcomed
largely by the upper classes, whose nerves were offended by Puritan
vulgarities, and leavened gradually the whole organisation of the Church
of England. Men of intellect who would once have interfered had ceased
to care for such things, and allowed them to go their own way. The
Rationalists and critics, whom Disraeli so sagaciously disliked,
worked havoc in a party whose whole belief was in their Bible. The
Evangelicals, who had been narrow and tyrannical in the days of their
power, found themselves fading into impotence; while in the mass of the
people a doctrinal faith was superseded by a vague religiosity which saw
no particular difference between one creed and another.
[Sidenote: THE CHURCH OF IRELAND]
The High Churchmen, who grew strong as their rivals declined, called
themselves Catholics again, and abjured the name of Protestant. To
unprotestantise the Church of England had been the confessed purpose of
the first Tractarians, and the work had been effectively done. Mr.
Gladstone was the most distinguished of their lay adherents. The purity
of his life, the loftiness of his principles, his well-known because
slightly ostentatious piety commended him generally to the national
confidence, English statesmen with strong religious convictions having
been recently uncommon articles. Thus, in addition to the ordinary
Radical forces, Mr. Gladstone had the support of a great body of
influential clergy, who, although tried at times by his questionable
associations, continued to believe in him and uphold him--to uphold him
especially in his onslaught upon their unfortunate Irish sister. The
Irish Church had refused to follow in the new counter-Reformation. The
Irish Church was Evangelical to the heart--actively, vigorously,
healthily Evangelical--a Church militant in Luther's spirit. 'We have no
Tractarians here,' said the Bishop of Cashel to me. 'We have the real
thing, and know too much about it.' The life which was showing was of
late growth too, and was therefore likely to continue. The Church of
Ireland as a missionary institution had not been a success. Established
by Elizabeth for political reasons, it had existed for two centuries and
a half, making no impression on the mass of the population. Such
Protestant spirituality as remained was confined to the Presbyterians of
Ulster and the few Southern Nonconformists who were descended from the
Cromwellian colonists. The bishops, secured after the Revolution by the
Penal Laws, had received their large incomes and consumed them with
dignity; but when they exerted themselves it was to persecute Protestant
dissenters and drive them out of Ireland. The ancient churches fell to
ruins. Incumbents ceased to reside where they had no congregations, left
their parishes to underpaid curates, or more commonly to the tithe
proctor. So things went on till the long negligence had borne its
inevitable fruit. The Nonconformists were then let alone. The rebellion
of 1798, the rapid growth of the Catholic population, the immediate
contact with the Catholic system in an aggressive form, and the
relaxation of the Penal Code gradually roused the clergy to exertion.
The ruined churches were repaired or others provided, and before the
middle of the present century the Protestant ministers in Ireland were
showing a sincerity, a piety, a devotion to the work of their calling of
exceptional and peculiar interest. I was myself at that time brought in
contact with many of the Established clergy in the southern provinces.
They had more of the saintly character of the early Christians than any
clergy of any denomination that I had ever fallen in with.
After the tithe question had been settled they had no quarrels with the
Catholic peasantry. They were poor, but they were charitable beyond
their means. They were beloved, respected, trusted by all classes of the
population. In every parish there was a resident educated gentleman,
whose help in the most miserable times was never asked in vain if the
occasion was not beyond the resources of those to whom the appeal was
made. They made some few proselytes, and this was treated as a crime in
them, while their rivals thought it no crime to convert a heretic. The
Evangelical Calvinism which they generally professed was more attractive
to the Celtic peasantry than the Episcopal _Via Media_. The Irish nature
is impressible by a real belief, and the old creed which roused half
Europe to fight for spiritual liberty in the sixteenth century in this
one corner of the globe remained alive and active. The differences which
had separated the Establishment from the Ulster Presbyterians had
practically disappeared. For the first time since the Reformation the
Protestants of Ireland were of one heart and one mind.
[Sidenote: IRELAND AND ENGLAND]
The time had been when such a disposition would have had the warm
sympathies of the sister island. But the Protestant fire on this side of
the Channel had sunk to ashes, and the ashes themselves were cooling.
Even among the Scotch and the Dissenters the creed of Knox and Cromwell
had subsided into opinion flavoured with a vague Liberalism. While the
English Church parties were drifting Romeward with an eagerness which to
some persons appeared like the descent over a steep place of certain
foolish animals, their poor Irish brethren who adhered to the faith of
their fathers had lost their sympathy, and when the statesman whom they
regarded with so much admiration proposed to disable and disendow the
Irish branch of the Establishment, they looked on with indifference and
did not withdraw their confidence in him. They did not actively
approve. Even Mr. Gladstone himself professed to feel some qualms of
conscience. 'We do it wrong,' he said, 'being so majestical, to offer it
the show of violence.' But by their silence they gave him their tacit
sanction, and lent an air of respectability to a proceeding which
without it he might have failed to go through with. They allowed the
Irish Church to be dealt with politically, as a branch of his Protestant
Ascendency which had been called a upas-tree.
[Sidenote: IRISH CHARACTER]
As a Churchman Mr. Gladstone was a Tractarian; as a statesman, he had
become an advanced Radical. From neither point of view was the Irish
Church to his liking. Yet as English statesman he was taking a bold,
perhaps a rash step in endeavouring to weaken English authority in a
country so ill-affected to us, when it had been built up with so many
centuries of effort. Geographical position compels us to keep Ireland
subject to the British Crown. That is the first fact of the situation--a
situation which cannot be changed till we have lost our place as a great
European power. The Irish, perhaps as much for this reason as for any
other, have resisted and still resist. They might have been reconciled
to their fate in return for other advantages if their own wills had been
consulted; but they have resented the claim of necessity. Difference of
religion has not been the cause of the hostility. Before the Reformation
as much as after it they never missed an opportunity of injuring or
attempting to break from us. The Reformation appeared to sanctify their
quarrel, and caused a century of civil war and desolation; and the
English Parliament, after all other means had been tried in vain to
bring them to obedience, had determined to colonise the island with
Scotch and English Protestants whose loyalty could be depended on. The
land was taken forcibly away from the native owners, and was given to
adventurers or to Cromwell's soldiers who would undertake to defend it.
It was a violent measure; but to hold a country in subjection against
its will is itself an act of violence which entails others. The Irish
people had shown in five centuries of resistance that they could only be
held to us by force. The colonists were the English garrison, and
however grave their faults and miserable their deficiencies, the result
was that Ireland had a century of peace. Twice during that period there
was a civil war in Great Britain, and Ireland remained quiet. When the
American colonies revolted, the Irish Catholics offered their swords and
their services to 'the best of kings,' and only when the Penal Laws were
relaxed and they were allowed an instalment of liberty did they again
attempt insurrection. The Penal Laws are considered an atrocity. They
were borrowed from the terms of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
and Voltaire, an impartial witness on such a subject, was able to use
language about Ireland during the time when they were in force which
deserves more attention than it has met with. 'Ce pays est toujours
resté sous la domination de l'Angleterre, mais inculte, pauvre et
inutile jusqu'à ce qu'enfin dans le dix-huitième siècle l'agriculture,
les manufactures, les arts, les sciences, tout s'y est perfectionné, et
l'Irlande, quoique subjuguée, est devenue une des plus florissantes
provinces de l'Europe.' ('Essai sur les Mœurs,' chap. 50.) So Ireland
appeared to the keenest eye in Europe at the time when it is the fashion
to say that she was groaning under the hatefullest tyranny. The
description was too favourable, yet it was relatively correct. The Irish
are a military people. They are admirable as soldiers and police. They
obey authority and prosper under it. They run wild when left to their
own wills. An industrious people thrive best when free. A fighting
people require to be officered, and when authority is firm and just are
uniformly loyal. In Ireland, unfortunately, authority was not firm and
was not just. The trade laws were iniquitous. The Protestant gentry were
forced into idleness. They became a garrison without wholesome
occupation; yet at worst such advance as Ireland did make was wholly due
to them, and every step which was taken to reduce their power brought
back the old symptoms. It cannot be said that the system was
satisfactory; yet to abolish it altogether, to declare it to be a
poisonous plant which required to be uprooted, was an adventure which
ought not to have been entered upon without maturer consideration than
it received. The injustice (such as there was) lay in the original sin
of forcing an unwilling people into a connection which they detest.
Protestant ascendency was the instrument by which the connection was
maintained, and the only one which had even partially succeeded. If it
was swept away, what was to take its place? Conciliation, we are told.
But what had conciliation effected hitherto? The abolition of the Penal
Laws was to have brought peace. It brought only a sword. The admission
of the Catholics to the franchise was to have brought peace. It was
followed instantly by rebellion. Parliament was opened to them, and
tithe riots broke out, and midnight murdering. On the heel of each
concession came a Coercion Act, because Ireland could not be governed
otherwise. The eager Celt has regarded each step gained as the conquest
of an outwork of English dominion which has served but to whet the
appetite for attack and to weaken the defence. What reason was there to
suppose that when they heard Church and landlords denounced, when they
were told by a great English statesman that their grievances would only
be attended to when they made themselves dangerous, the result would be
different? The great grievance of all, the English sovereignty, would be
left. If that too was to be sacrificed--if after the internal
administration of their country was made over to themselves they showed
that nothing would satisfy them except national independence--were the
advocates of a trusting policy prepared to concede this point also? They
might answer 'Yes' perhaps. Better Ireland should be free altogether
than chained to England against her will. This might be their own
opinion, but they could not answer for the English nation; and if the
English nation refused, there would be nothing for it but civil war and
a fresh conquest.
Before letting loose an agitation so far-reaching and of such uncertain
consequence, Mr. Gladstone ought to have laid out the whole problem for
consideration in all its possible issues; not partially and crudely for
an immediate election cry, but in a form in which it could be maturely
discussed and paused over for years. To reverse and undo the policy of
centuries was a step which ought not to have been ventured without the
national consent. The electors knew less of Ireland even than Mr.
Gladstone himself, who ought to have made them first understand what it
was which they were called on to sanction.
But these are not times for long reflection. A Parliamentary leader sees
an opportunity. His followers echo him. Sentiment displaces reason, and
a majority is the most conclusive of arguments.
[Sidenote: CONSERVATIVE DEFEAT]
Mr. Gladstone brought forward his famous resolutions, carried them
against Mr. Disraeli's Government, and at the dissolution was rewarded
by a majority so sweeping that resistance was impossible. Disraeli
resigned without waiting for the meeting of Parliament--a sensible
example which has been since followed. With his usual calmness he
rallied his distracted followers and waited patiently while the two
great branches of the upas-tree were being hacked off, well aware that
the hot stage would be followed by a cold one when the effects of this
new departure began to show themselves. The Irish Church was reduced to
a voluntary communion. Tenants and landlords were made joint owners of
their lands--ill-mated companions set to sleep in a single bed, from
which one or other before long was likely to be ejected. Ireland made
its usual response; and within two years the state of Westmeath became
so serious that the Cabinet which was to have won the Irish heart
was obliged to move for a secret committee to consider how the
administration was to be carried on. Disraeli on leaving office might if
he had chosen have retired to the Upper House. He pleased himself better
by prevailing on the Queen to confer a coronet on his faithful
companion, and no act of his life gave him greater pride or pleasure.
Mrs. Disraeli[10] became Viscountess Beaconsfield, and he himself
remained in the House of Commons, where he could watch and criticise.
[Sidenote: EFFECTS OF MR. GLADSTONE'S POLICY]
A secret committee is only moved for on grave occasions. An evidence so
rapid and so palpable of the results of Mr. Gladstone's operations was
an opportunity for the exercise of Mr. Disraeli's peculiar powers. Of
late years he had been sparing in his sarcasms. His speeches had been
serious and argumentative, and the rapier and the whip lash had been
laid aside. But they were lying ready for him, and he had not forgotten
his old art. He did not again object as he had objected in Peel's case
to granting extraordinary powers to a Government which he distrusted. He
was willing to assist the Cabinet, since they needed assistance, in
maintaining order in Ireland; Lord Hartington had reminded him that he
had himself made a similar application in another Parliament. But he
confessed his astonishment that such an application should be necessary.
'The noble lord,' he said, 'has made some reference, from that richness
of precedent with which he has been crammed on this occasion, to what
occurred in 1852; and in the midst of the distress of this regenerating
Government of Ireland supported by a hundred legions and elected by an
enthusiastic people in order to terminate the grievances of that country
and secure its contentment and tranquillity, he must needs dig up our
poor weak Government of 1852 and say, "There was Mr. Napier, your
attorney-general: he moved for a committee, and you were a member of his
Cabinet." If I had had a majority of a hundred behind my back I would
not have moved for that committee. I did the best I could. But was the
situation in which I was placed similar to the situation of her
Majesty's present Ministers? Look for a moment to the relations which
this Government bears to the House of Commons with regard to the
administration of Ireland. The right hon. gentleman opposite (Mr.
Gladstone) was elected for a specific purpose. He was the Minister who
alone was able to cope with these long-enduring and mysterious evils
that had tortured and tormented the civilisation of England. The right
hon. gentleman persuaded the people of England that with regard to
Irish politics he was in possession of the philosopher's stone. Well,
sir, he has been returned to this House with an immense majority, with
the object of securing the tranquillity and content of Ireland. Has
anything been grudged him--time, labour, devotion? Whatever has been
proposed has been carried. Under his influence, and at his instance, we
have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have
condoned treason, we have destroyed Churches, we have shaken property to
its foundations, and we have emptied gaols; and now he cannot govern one
county without coming to a Parliamentary committee. The right hon.
gentleman, after all his heroic exploits, and at the head of his great
majority, is making government ridiculous.'
'We have legalised confiscation, we have consecrated sacrilege, we have
condoned treason,' pronounced with drawling alliteration, was worth a
whole Parliamentary campaign. Everyone recollected the words from the
neatness of the combination; everyone felt and acknowledged their biting
justice. No one was a match for Disraeli in the use of the rapier. The
composition of such sentences was an intellectual pleasure to him. A few
years later, when the Prince Imperial was killed in South Africa, he
observed, on hearing of it, 'A very remarkable people the Zulus: they
defeat our generals, they convert our bishops, they have settled the
fate of a great European dynasty.'
No Government was ever started on an ambitious career with louder
pretensions or brighter promises than Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet in 1868.
In less than three years their glory was gone, the aureole had faded
from their brows. The bubble of oratory, which had glowed with all the
colours of the rainbow, had burst when in contact with fact, and the
poor English people had awoke to the dreary conviction that it was but
vapour after all. In April, 1872, the end was visibly coming, and
Disraeli could indulge again, at their expense, in his malicious
mockery. In a speech at Manchester he said:
'The stimulus is subsiding. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some
took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a
menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury bench, the Ministers
reminded me of those marine landscapes not unusual on the coasts of
South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame
flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous.
There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of
the sea.'