In order to complete this brief study of Tone’s teaching it is necessary
to consider him as a democrat. And Tone, the greatest of modern Irish
Separatists, is the first and greatest of modern Irish democrats. It was
Tone that said:
“Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of
property will not support us, they must fall: we can support
ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of
the community--_the men of no property_.”
In this glorious appeal to Cæsar modern Irish democracy has its origin.
I have already quoted the secret Manifesto to the Friends of Freedom,
attributed to Tone, in which the right to national freedom is made to
rest on its true basis, the right to individual freedom. The abstract
theory of freedom was not further developed by Tone, who devoted his
life to the pursuit of a practical object rather than to the working out
of a philosophy. When, however, any question arose which involved the
relations of a democracy and an aristocracy, of the people and the
gentry (“as they affect to call themselves”), of the “men of no
property” and the “men of property,” Tone’s decision was instant and
unerring. The people must rule; if the aristocracy make common cause
with the people, so much the better; if not, woe to the aristocracy. One
passage from his Journal, under date April 27th, 1798, says all that
need be said as to the practical question of dealing with a hostile
aristocracy in a national revolution:
“What miserable slaves are the gentry of Ireland! The only
accusation brought against the United Irishmen by their enemies,
is that they wish to break the connection with England, or, in
other words, to establish the independence of their country--an
object in which surely the men of property are most interested.
Yet the very sound of independence seems to have terrified them
out of all sense, spirit, or honesty. If they had one drop of
Irish blood in their veins, one grain of true courage or genuine
patriotism in their hearts, they should have been the first to
support this great object; the People would have supported them;
the English government would never have dared to attempt the
measures they have since triumphantly pursued, and continue to
pursue; our Revolution would have been accomplished without a
shock, or perhaps one drop of blood spilled; which now can
succeed, if it does succeed, only by all the calamities of a
most furious and sanguinary contest: for the war in Ireland,
whenever it does take place, will not be an ordinary one. The
armies will regard each other not as soldiers, but as deadly
enemies. Who, then, are to blame for this? The United Irishmen,
who set the question afloat, or the English government and their
partisans, the Irish gentry, who resist it? If independence be
good for a country as liberty for an individual, the question
will be soon decided. Why does England so pertinaciously resist
our independence? Is it for love of us--is it because _she_
thinks _we_ are better as we are? That single argument, if it
stood alone, should determine every honest Irishman.
“But, it will be said, the United Irishmen extend their views
farther; they go now to a distribution of property, and an
agrarian law. I know not whether they do or no. I am sure in
June 1795 when I was forced to leave the country, they
entertained no such ideas. If they have since taken root among
them, the Irish gentry may accuse themselves. Even then they
made themselves parties to the business: not content with
disdaining to hold communications with the United Irishmen, they
were among the foremost of their persecutors; even those who
were pleased to denominate themselves patriots were more eager
to vilify, and, if they could, to degrade them, than the most
devoted and submissive slaves of the English Government. What
wonder if the leaders of the United Irishmen, finding themselves
not only deserted, but attacked by those who, for every reason,
should have been their supporters and fellow-labourers, felt
themselves no longer called upon to observe any measures with
men only distinguished by the superior virulence of their
persecuting spirit? If such men, in the issue, lose their
property, they are themselves alone to blame, by deserting the
first and most sacred of duties--the duty to their country. They
have incurred a wilful forfeiture by disdaining to occupy the
station they might have held among the People, and which the
People would have been glad to see them fill; they left a
vacancy to be seized by those who had more courage, more sense,
and more honesty; and not only so, but by this base and
interested desertion they furnished their enemies with every
argument of justice, policy, and interest, to enforce the system
of confiscation.
* * * * *
“The best that can be said in palliation of the conduct of the
English party, is that they are content to sacrifice the liberty
and independence of their country to the pleasure of revenge,
and their own personal security. They see Ireland only in their
rent rolls, their places, their patronage, and their pensions.
There is not a man among them who, in the bottom of his soul,
does not feel that he is a degraded being in comparison of those
whom he brands with the names of incendiaries and traitors. It
is this stinging reflection which, among other powerful motives,
is one of the most active in spurring them on to revenge. Their
dearest interests, their warmest passions, are equally engaged.
Who can forgive the man that forces him to confess that he is a
voluntary slave, and that he has sold for money everything that
should be most precious to an honourable heart? that he has
trafficked in the liberties of his children and his own, and
that he is hired and paid to commit a daily parricide on his
country? Yet these are the charges which not a man of that
infamous caste can deny to himself before the sacred tribunal of
his own conscience. At least the United Irishmen, as I have
already said, have a grand, a sublime object in view. Their
enemies have not as yet ventured, in the long catalogue of their
accusations, to insert the charge of interested motives. Whilst
that is the case they may be feared and abhorred, but they can
never be despised; and I believe there are few men who do not
look upon contempt as the most insufferable of all human evils.
Can the English faction say as much? In vain do they crowd
together, and think by their numbers to disguise or lessen their
infamy. The public sentiment, the secret voice of their own
corrupt hearts, has already condemned them. They see their
destruction rapidly approaching, and they have the consciousness
that when they fall no honest man will pity them. _They shall
perish like their own dung; those who have seen them shall say,
Where are they?_”
Tone did not propose any general confiscation of private property other
than the property of Englishmen in Ireland, and this only after
proclamation to the English people, as distinct from the English
Government, stating the grounds of the action of the Irish nation and
declaring their earnest desire to avoid the effusion of blood; if, after
such proclamation, the English people supported the English Government
in war upon Ireland, Tone held that the confiscation of English property
“would then be an act of strict justice, as the English people would
have made themselves parties to the war.” Emmet’s proposals in 1803 are
a fuller and more detailed expression of the mind of revolutionary
Ireland on the subject of property. The first decree drafted by Emmet
for his Provisional Government was that “tithes are forever abolished,
and church lands are the property of the nation”; the second laid down
that “from this date all transfers of landed property are prohibited,
each person paying his rent until the National Government is
established, the national will declared, and the courts of justice be
organised”; the third made a like provision with regard to the transfer
of bonds and securities; and the fifth decreed the confiscation of the
property of Irishmen in the Militia, Yeomanry, or Volunteer corps who,
after fourteen days, should be found in arms against the Republic. When
we speak of men like Tone and Emmet as “visionaries” and “idealists” we
regard only one side of their minds. Both were extraordinarily able men
of affairs, masters of all the details of the national, social, and
economic positions in their day; and both would have been ruthless in
revolution, shedding exactly as much blood as would have been necessary
to their purpose. Both, however, were Nationalists first, and
revolutionists only in so far as revolution was essential to the
establishment of the nation. “We war not against property,” said Emmet
in his proclamation, “we war against no religious sect, we war not
against past opinions or prejudices--we war against English dominion.”
One is now in a position to sum up Tone’s teaching in a series of
propositions: