THE IRISH PRASTE.
There are three distinct classes of Roman Catholic priests—the ascetic
and spiritual, the jolly and intellectual, the brutal and Bœotian. Of
the first Cardinal Manning is the type. The second was presented to us
in the person of Cardinal Wiseman, who made the Romanist priest as famous
in his day as Cardinal Manning in ours. Of the third class you may see
specimens every day in every Belgian town, and in many parts of England
and Ireland. Father O’Bourke was a combination of the two latter types—a
man of humour, a plausible speaker, a tremendous orator, and a man whose
great art was to be conciliatory to all. He could be very rollicking
over a glass of whisky-and-water, but his power was more physical than
spiritual. He had something of a domineering tone, the result chiefly of
his mixing with the low Irish who emigrate to England, where, like the
Gibeonites of old, they become chiefly hewers of stone and drawers of
water.
Mr. Wentworth received the priest with all due politeness, as he
explained that he had come for a friendly chat.
‘I am delighted to hear it,’ said Wentworth. ‘I have been much in
Ireland.’
‘And you learnt there, sir,’ said the priest, ‘that England is a very
cruel country.’
‘I don’t see that, exactly,’ said Mr. Wentworth; ‘for fifty years we
English have been trying to do all the good we can for Ireland.’
‘Ah, so you think, but I assure you, sir, that it is quite otherwise; yet
all that we ask from England is justice. England is rich and powerful,
and uses her riches and her power to oppress poor Ireland.’
‘How so?’
‘Sir, allow me to refer you to the history of my unfortunate country.
There was a time when Ireland had a flourishing linen trade, but England,
in her jealousy of Ireland, destroyed it.’
‘Well,’ said Wentworth, ‘I have been in Belfast, and was struck with the
prosperity of the place, the respectability of its shops, the size of its
warehouses, the extent of its harbours. I saw a large population all
seemingly well employed, well dressed, and well fed, with no end of
public institutions and newspapers, and all in consequence of that linen
trade which you tell me the English have destroyed.’
‘Oh, sir,’ said the priest, ‘one swallow does not make a summer. If one
town is fairly well off, that is no reply to the charge of poverty
produced by the English. You’ve seen our harbour in Galway?’
‘I have been there, and, undoubtedly, it is a fine harbour.’
‘Indeed, sir, it is,’ replied the priest; ‘and, as you are probably
aware, at one time it was intended to be the seat for a great
Transatlantic trade.’
‘Yes, we all know that. We have, unfortunately, all heard of the
collapse of the Galway Line. It is a sad sight to see the great
warehouse standing there empty. I believe a good deal of money was lost
by too confiding shareholders?’
‘Indeed, sir, you’re right; but what was the reason?’
‘Well, I really don’t recollect at this particular moment.’
‘Sir, the reason was the jealousy of the Liverpool shipowners. What do
you think they did?’
‘I really can’t say.’
‘Well, as soon as the Liverpool shipowners saw the line was going to be a
success, they came over to Galway and bribed the pilot to run the ship on
the only rock there was in the harbour, and there was the end of the
Galway Transatlantic Line.’
‘Of course, Father O’Bourke, I am not going to contradict you,’ replied
Wentworth. ‘I am not a Liverpool shipowner, and know little about them;
but I was not long ago in Galway, in the very harbour to which you refer,
and while I was there a man said to me that Allan’s steamers used to call
in there for emigrants, and I asked why they did not then. “Oh,” said
he, “the fact was, that while they charged in Londonderry a penny a ton,
and in Queenstown a halfpenny, in Galway the charges were sixpence a ton,
and so the steamers were driven away.” Thus, you see, it was not the
Liverpool shipowners, but the Galway people themselves, that drove the
trade away. What do you say to that?’
‘Well,’ said the priest, rather confusedly, ‘the fact is, there are
wheels within wheels; we do not want the people to emigrate.’
‘No, you fear you will lose your power over them if they do; but, for the
sake of abusing England, you tell me that England ruined the Galway Steam
Packet Company. I am inclined to believe it did nothing of the kind.’
‘But the landlords, what do you think of them?’
‘So far as I have seen them, they are a mixed lot, like all the rest of
us—some good, some bad. I blame people who bid against each other in
their madness to get a bit of land on which it is impossible for anyone
to live. I blame the priests and the patriots and the landlords who for
ages have winked at this, and allowed the people to sink into a state of
degradation such as you see nowhere else. For miles and miles, as you
know, Father O’Bourke, in many parts of Galway, you see fields covered
with stones, and these fields are let off as farms. If the landlord
resides on the estate the stones are cleared off, the soil is drained,
and the tenant manages to make a living—not such as he could get in
America, or Canada, or Australia, if he had pluck enough to leave the old
country and emigrate, but a living of some kind. If he is under a bad
landlord—a poor Irish squire, for instance—of course it is different. If
the landlord does not reside upon the estate—unless he be a great English
landlord, like the Duke of Devonshire—the tenant and the land have alike
a bad time of it. But as the stars in their courses fought against
Sisera, so the heavens are unpropitious to the small farmer. If he rises
early and sits up late, and eats the bread of carefulness, all is in
vain. In Liverpool there are five or six miles of docks filled with
American corn and cheese and bacon. How can the small farmer, either in
England, or Ireland, or Scotland, compete with that? “It is my belief,”
said a Liverpool gentleman to me—who in the famine year went on a mission
of mercy, and as a messenger of relief exposed himself to all the horrors
of a Connemara winter—“that the small farmer could not get a living even
if, instead of paying rent, rent were given him on condition of his
taking the farm.”
‘I fear, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest, ‘you have looked at Ireland
with prejudiced eyes.’
‘Not a bit of it. No one has been more friendly to the Irish than the
Liberal Party, of which I am a member, and yet we are called infamous,
and bloodthirsty, and base, and brutal. You know yourself here in
England you live in perfect peace and security; you are allowed to go in
and out amongst the people to make converts if you are so disposed. In
Ireland, if I attempted to do anything of the kind, I should stand a good
chance of a broken head.’
‘Well, sir, we are a warm-hearted, impulsive people, attached very
strongly to the old religion—the religion of our forefathers.’
‘There is no doubt of that, sir,’ continued Wentworth; ‘wherever you go
in Ireland, in the midst of all its dirt, and starvation, and
wretchedness, and poverty, you see one man well dressed and well fed.’
‘And who may he be, sir?’
‘The parish priest.’
‘And why should he not be? Is not he the guide and shepherd of his
flock? I suppose you will blame him next,’ said Father O’Bourke,
reddening.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘What for?’
‘For his desertion of the people.’
‘Really, Mr. Wentworth, you are amusing. You make me laugh,’ said the
reverend father, looking uncommonly angry. ‘Should the priest not take
the part of the people?’
‘Certainly. But he does nothing of the kind. Is he not the partisan of
the popular agitator? Does he not place himself by the side of men whose
language is utterly false? Who stimulates the passions of the people to
fever heat? who teach the poor Irish—ignorant as they are, assassins as I
fear a few of them are, cowards as they are when human life is to be
saved—that they have every virtue under heaven?’
‘Indeed, Mr. Wentworth,’ said the priest indignantly, ‘I know nothing of
the kind. Ireland has been trampled under foot by the murdering English,
and now we are within measurable distance of Home Rule.’
‘And what will be the good of that?’
‘That the Irish will have their rights at last; that we shall be free of
English tyranny and English injustice.’
‘Yes, you will change King Stork for King Log. Irishmen are bound to
quarrel. I was at Queenstown last summer, and taking up the Cork paper,
I read an account of the meeting of the Harbour Commissioners. In the
course of the meeting, one member denounced another as a humbug and
miscreant of the vilest character, and said, old as he was, he was
prepared to fight him with the weapons God had given him, and thereupon
asked him to step into the next room and have it out. When I mentioned
the matter to a priest, he said sarcastically, “Of course there are no
rows in the British House of Commons.” I replied that the questions
discussed there were more likely to lead to heated debate than the
trifling matters a set of Harbour Commissioners would have to deal with.
Furthermore, I added that when we did have a row, it was often begun by
Irishmen, and generally connected with Irish affairs.’
‘Ireland must be governed by Irish ideas; that is all we want.’
‘Let us look at Scotland. England and Scotland were joined together, and
the union was as much hated by the Scotch as the Irish union is hated by
your people now. Look at England and Scotland now. Are they not one
people—equally great, equally flourishing, equally happy under what was,
at one time, a detested union? Why should not England and Ireland get on
just as well? Had we given way to Scotch ideas, we should now be at
loggerheads.’
‘Unfortunately, you see, in Ireland,’ said the priest, ‘public opinion is
the other way.’
‘Public opinion! What public opinion have you, where boycotting and the
bullet of the midnight assassin, who, coward-like, waits for his
unsuspecting victim in a ditch or behind a stone wall, have created a
reign of terror under which all freedom of thought and action is
suppressed? Public opinion does not exist in Ireland. The Irish are
down-trodden indeed. No Russian serfs are worse off.’
‘Nevertheless, in the heart of every Irishman there is a passionate
desire for freedom which has taught her sons to lead heroic lives and to
die heroic deaths. Think of Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and many
others, whose names will live in immortal song.’
‘By all means. They had much to complain of—though they sought a remedy
the wrong way, and suffered in consequence. The Ireland of their day was
bad enough; but the Ireland of to-day is different.’
‘Different indeed,’ said the priest proudly. ‘Now we are a united
people; we have the great American nation on our side.’
‘Shall I tell you what an American lady said to me the other day, as I
saw her off in a Cunarder for New York?’ asked Mr. Wentworth.
‘If you like, sir.’
‘“Pray, Mr. Wentworth,” she said, leaning over the ship’s side, as I was
getting into the tug—“pray don’t send us any more Irish.”’
‘That may be, sir. We all know ladies have their whims and aversions as
well as other people. But you don’t seem fond of the Irish.’
‘On the contrary, I admire them much. I envy them their ingenuity, their
humour, their enthusiasm, their power of oratory, their pluck and spirit.
I only wish them better led. A real union of English and Irish would, I
believe, make us the first nation in the world.’
‘Then, you don’t think much of our leaders?’
‘Oh yes I do. They are clever men—far cleverer than our average
M.P.’s—but they have put the people on the wrong scent. It is not
justice Ireland wants. England and Scotland are quite ready to accord
her that. The people of England have been the warmest friends of Ireland
from the first. Indeed, she has had more justice done to her than
England and Scotland. Her farmers have rights denied to ours; her
representatives occupy almost entirely the attention of Parliament. Your
leaders only play with the people, and make the wrongs of Ireland a
stepping-stone for themselves to place and power. What Ireland wants now
is a little peace. The people are dying of political delirium tremens.
Said an Irish hotel-keeper to me one day, “What Ireland wants is more
industry. Farmers’ sons won’t work. They prefer instead to go to fairs
and races and public meetings. Irishmen won’t invest in any Irish
enterprise, and if they do it is always a job they make of it.” I myself
have known when Englishmen have gone to Ireland to establish manufactures
to keep the people employed, that the foremen have been shot and the
manufactories closed. You must have known something of the same kind,
Father O’Bourke.’
‘It may be that there are difficulties between Irishmen and Saxon
masters, and that these difficulties may have occasionally led to
bloodshed and loss of life. We are a hot-headed people. We have besides
the wrongs of many long centuries to remember. You recollect Sir Walter
Raleigh, Mr. Wentworth?’
‘Blessings on his sacred head, I do! Did he not teach us to grow
potatoes and smoke tobacco? I’d forgive a man a good deal in
consideration of such lasting benefits.’
‘Please recollect he was one of the English who accompanied Lord Grey to
the South of Ireland, and took part in the attack on a great castle
there. All the inmates were slaughtered. A few women, some of them
pregnant, were hanged. A servant of Saunders, an Irish gentleman, and a
priest were hanged, also. The bodies, six hundred in all, were stripped
and laid out upon the sands—“as gallant, goodly personages,” said Grey,
“as were ever beheld.” Was not that murderous work?’
‘It was indeed,’ said Wentworth sadly. ‘But why treasure up such deeds
of blood done ages ago? It is not Christian. The Bible tells us to
forgive our enemies.’
‘But it is human nature. We Irishmen have long memories. Such things
can never be forgotten or forgiven.’
‘There I think you’re wrong. Besides, in the case you refer to the
victims were chiefly foreigners, who had no business there, who had come
merely for the sake of fighting. What was done in barbarous times would
not be permitted now. Let us strive to be better friends. You Irishmen
come to England and we welcome you at the bar, on the press, in trade, in
the army or navy, or the public service. I will go further still. It is
a shame that when a bridge is to be built over the Shannon you have to
come to London. You ought to manage your own local affairs. But England
is an empire, and high-spirited, intelligent Irishmen would rather take
part in Imperial politics than shine in a local Parliament. Home Rule
will not satisfy the natural aspirations of an Irishman of talent. I met
an old Dutch naval captain at Flushing who complained to me one day
bitterly of the hardship of his lot. When he was born Holland was a part
of France; now Holland was independent, and he was a citizen of a little
principality rather than of a great empire. It will be so with the
Irishman of the future—or an Irishman in search of a career.’
‘But, sir, is not a desire for Ireland’s nationality a reasonable one?’
‘Undoubtedly; but Ireland never was a nation. It was always torn with
dissension; with leaders and lords ready to kill each other, only kept
from doing so by England. No one would rejoice to see Ireland a nation
more than I, but that is a dream of which I despair.’
‘But Home Rule will make Ireland a nation.’
‘How can you say that, sir?’ said Wentworth indignantly. ‘It is in the
Protestant north that the strength of Ireland lies; it is there you meet
intelligence and industry and wealth; it is there you see what Ireland
might become. In all other parts of Ireland, what do you see but
wretchedness and poverty? There is a permanent line of separation which
not even Home Rule can obliterate.’
‘You are very outspoken, Mr. Wentworth—more so than is politic, I fear,’
said the reverend Father, with a bitter smile. ‘We have many Irish
voters in this borough, and I fear they will be unable to give you their
support; and Irish support is a matter of some consequence. In many
borough elections they can turn the scale.’
‘Alas! I am quite aware of that; but I hold my opinion, nevertheless.
The demand for an Irish Parliament independent of an Imperial one will
come to the front, the Liberal Party will find themselves compelled to
support it—’
‘And then we shall have peace.’
‘No a bit of it! Then we shall have civil war. It was only a week or
two since I was talking to a porter at the Limerick Station. He said to
me: “The people want Home Rule. Let ’em have it, and there won’t be many
of ’em left.” And I fear the porter was right.’
‘Why, who will there be to fight?’
‘The men of the North. I have no sympathy with Orangemen: they are hard
and bigoted, and have done immense mischief in Ireland; but they will
never be content with a Home Rule measure which will hand them over to
their foes. Things are bad enough now, with England keeping both
parties, to a certain extent, from flying at each other. What Ireland
will be under Home Rule such as will be accepted by the Nationalists I
shudder to contemplate.’
‘You are easily alarmed,’ said the priest, as he took his leave. ‘We
shall have Home Rule, and for once Ireland will be at peace.’
‘I hope so, I am sure,’ said Mr. Wentworth, as the reverend gentleman
left him alone.