The democratic truths that I have just stated are implicit in Tone and
in Davis, though there was this difference between the two men, that
Tone had a manly contempt for “the gentry (as they affect to call
themselves),” while Davis had a little sentimental regard for them. But
Davis loved the people, as every Nationalist must love the people,
seeing that the people are the nation; his nationalism was not mere
devotion to an abstract idea, it was a devotion to the actual men and
women who make up this nation of Ireland, a belief in their rights, and
a resolve to establish them as the owners of Ireland and the masters of
all her destinies. There is no other sort of nationalism than this, the
nationalism which believes in and seeks to enthrone the sovereign
people. Tone had appealed to “that numerous and respectable class, the
men of no property,” and in that gallant and characteristic phrase he
had revealed his perception of a great historic truth, namely, that in
Ireland “the gentry (as they affect to call themselves)” have uniformly
been corrupted by England, and the merchants and middle-class
capitalists have, when not corrupted, been uniformly intimidated,
whereas the common people have for the most part remained unbought and
unterrified. It is, in fact, true that the repositories of the Irish
tradition, as well the spiritual tradition of nationality as the kindred
tradition of stubborn physical resistance to England, have been the
great, splendid, faithful, common people--that dumb multitudinous throng
which sorrowed during the penal night, which bled in ’98, which starved
in the Famine; and which is here still--what is left of it--unbought and
unterrified. Let no man be mistaken as to who will be lord in Ireland
when Ireland is free. The people will be lord and master. The people who
wept in Gethsemane, who trod the sorrowful way, who died naked on a
cross, who went down into hell, will rise again glorious and immortal,
will sit on the right hand of God, and will come in the end to give
judgment, a judge just and terrible.
Tone sounded the gallant _reveillé_ of democracy in Ireland. The man who
gave it its battle-cries was James Fintan Lalor. Lalor was a fiery
spirit, as of some angelic missionary, imprisoned for a few years in a
very frail tenement, drawing his earthly breath in pain; but strong with
a great spiritual strength and gifted with a mind which had the
trenchant beauty of steel. What he had to say for his people (and for
all mankind) was said in a very few words. This gospel of the Sovereign
People that Fintan Lalor delivered is the shortest of the gospels; but
so precious is it, so pregnant with meaning in its every word, that to
express its sense one would have to quote it almost as it stands; which
indeed one could do in a tract a very little longer than this. No one
who wrote as little as Lalor has ever written so well. In his first
letter he laments that he has never learned the art of literary
expression; in “The Faith of a Felon” he says that he has all his life
been destitute of books. Commonly, it is by reading and writing that a
man learns to write greatly. Lalor, who had read little and written
nothing, wrote greatly from the moment he began to write. The Lord God
must have inspired the poor crippled recluse, for no mortal man could of
himself have uttered the things he uttered.
James Fintan Lalor, in Duffy’s phrase, “announced himself” in Irish
politics in 1847, and he announced himself “with a voice of assured
confidence and authority.” In a letter to Duffy, which startled all the
Young Irelanders and which set Mitchel’s heart on fire, he declared
himself one of the people, one who therefore knew the people: and he
told the young men that there was neither strength nor even a
disposition among the people to carry on O’Connell’s Repeal, but that
there was strength in the people to carry national independence if
national independence were associated with something else.
“A mightier question is in the land--one beside which Repeal
dwarfs down to a petty parish question; one on which Ireland may
not alone try her own right but try the right of the world; on
which she would be not merely an asserter of old principles,
often asserted, and better asserted before her, an humble and
feeble imitator and follower of other countries--but an original
inventor, propounder, and propagandist, in the van of the earth,
and heading the nations; on which her success or her failure
alike would never be forgotten by man, but would make her for
ever a lodestar of history; on which Ulster would be not ‘on her
flank’ but at her side, and on which, better and best of all,
she need not plead in humble petitions her beggarly wrongs and
how beggarly she bore them, nor plead any right save the right
of her MIGHT....
“Repeal may perish with all who support it sooner than I will
consent to be fettered on this question, or to connect myself
with any organised body that would ban or merge, in favour of
Repeal or any other measure, that greatest of all our rights on
this side of heaven--God’s grant to Adam and his poor children
for ever, when He sent them from Eden in His wrath and bid them
go work for their bread. Why should I name it?”
His proposals as to means thrilled the young orators and debaters as the
ringing voice of an angel might thrill them:
“As regards the use of none but legal means, any means and all
means might be made illegal by Act of Parliament, and such
pledge, therefore, is passive obedience. As to the pledge of
abstaining from the use of any but moral force, I am quite
willing to take such pledge, if, and provided, the English
Government agree to take it also; but ‘if not, not.’ Let England
pledge not to argue the question by the prison, the
convict-ship, or the halter; and I will readily pledge not to
argue it in any form of physical logic. But dogs tied and stones
loose are no bargain. Let the stones be given up; or unmuzzle
the wolf-dog....”
At Duffy’s invitation Lalor developed his doctrines in two letters to
the _Nation_, one addressed to the landlords and one to the people. To
the landlords he spoke this ominous warning:
“Refuse it [to be Irishmen], and you commit yourself to the
position of paupers, to the mercy of English Ministers and
English members; you throw your very existence on English
support, which England soon may find too costly to afford; you
lie at the feet of events; you lie in the way of a people and
the movement of events and the march of a people shall be over
you.”
The essence of Lalor’s teaching is that the right to the material
ownership of a nation’s soil co-exists with the right to make laws for
the nation and that both are inherent in the same authority, the
Sovereign People. He held in substance that Separation from England
would be valueless unless it put the people--the actual people and not
merely certain rich men--of Ireland in effectual ownership and
possession of the soil of Ireland; as for a return to the _status quo_
before 1800, it was to him impossible and unthinkable. When Mitchel’s
_United Irishman_ was suppressed in 1848, Martin’s _Irish Felon_, with
Lalor as its standard-bearer and spokesman, stepped into the breach; and
in an article entitled “The Rights of Ireland” in the first issue of
that paper (June 24, 1848) Lalor delivered the new gospel. A long
passage must be quoted in full; but it can be quoted without any
comment, for it is self-luminous:
“Without agreement as to our objects we cannot agree on the
course we should follow. It is requisite the paper should have
but one purpose; and the public should understand what that
purpose is. Mine is not to repeal the Union, or restore
Eighty-two. This is not the year ’82, this is the year ’48. For
repeal I never went into ‘Agitation,’ and will not go into
insurrection. On that question, I refuse to arm, or to act in
any mode; and the country refuses. O’Connell made no mistake
when he pronounced it not worth the price of one drop of blood;
and for myself, I regret it was not left in the hands of
Conciliation Hall, whose lawful property it was, and is. Moral
force and repeal, the means and the purpose, were just fitted to
each other--_Arcades ambo_, balmy Arcadians both. When the means
were limited, it was only proper and necessary to limit the
purpose. When the means were enlarged, that purpose ought to
have been enlarged also. Repeal, in its vulgar meaning, I look
on as utterly impracticable by any mode of action whatever; and
the constitution of ’82 was absurd, worthless, and worse than
worthless. The English Government will never concede or
surrender to any species of moral force whatsoever; and the
country-peasantry will never arm and fight for it--neither will
I. If I am to stake life and fame, it must assuredly be for
something better and greater, more likely to last, more likely
to succeed, and better worth success. And a stronger passion, a
higher purpose, a nobler and more needful enterprise is
fermenting in the hearts of the people. A mightier question
moves Ireland to-day than that of merely repealing the Act of
Union. Not the constitution that Wolfe Tone died to abolish, but
the constitution that Tone died to obtain--independence; full
and absolute independence for this island, and for every man
within this island. Into no movement that would leave an enemy’s
garrison in possession of all our lands, masters of our
liberties, our lives, and all our means of life and
happiness--into no such movement will a single man of the
greycoats enter with an armed hand, whatever the town population
may do. On a wider fighting field, with stronger positions and
greater resources than are afforded by the paltry question of
Repeal, must we close for our final struggle with England, or
sink and surrender.
“Ireland her own--Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod
to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to
have and hold from God alone who gave it--to have and to hold to
them and their heirs for ever, without suit or service, faith or
fealty, rent or render, to any power under Heaven.... When a
greater and more ennobling enterprise is on foot, every inferior
and feebler project or proceeding will soon be left in the hands
of old women, of dastards, imposters, swindlers, and imbeciles.
All the strength and manhood of the island--all the courage,
energies, and ambition--all the passion, heroism, and
chivalry--all the strong men and strong minds--all those that
make revolutions will quickly desert it, and throw themselves
into the greater movement, throng into the larger and loftier
undertaking, and flock round the banner that flies nearest the
sky. There go the young, the gallant, the gifted, the daring;
and there, too, go the wise. For wisdom knows that in national
action _littleness_ is more fatal than the wildest rashness;
that greatness of object is essential to greatness of effort,
strength, and success; that a revolution ought never to take its
stand on low or narrow ground, but seize on the broadest and
highest ground it can lay hands on; and that a petty enterprise
seldom succeeds. Had America aimed or declared for less than
independence, she would, probably, have failed, and been a
fettered slave to-day.
“Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest--not to disturb
or dismantle the empire, but to abolish it utterly for ever--not
to fall back on ’82, but act up to ’48--not to resume or restore
an old constitution, but found a new nation and raise up a free
people, and strong as well as free, and secure as well as
strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the soil of
the land--this is my object, as I hope it is yours; and this,
you may rest assured, is the easier, as it is the nobler and
more pressing enterprise.”
Lalor proceeds to develop his teaching as to the ownership of the soil
of Ireland by its people:
“The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this: that
the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the
sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people of
Ireland; that they, and none but they, are the land-owners and
law-makers of this island; that all laws are null and void not
made by them, and all titles to land invalid not conferred or
confirmed by them; and that this full right of ownership may and
ought to be asserted by any and all means which God has put in
the power of man. In other, if not plainer words, I hold and
maintain that the entire soil of a country belongs of right to
the entire people of that country, and is the rightful property,
not of any one class, but of the nation at large, in full
effective possession, to let to whom they will, on whatever
tenures, terms, rents, services, and conditions they will; one
condition, however, being unavoidable and essential, the
condition that the tenant shall bear full, true, and undivided
fealty and allegiance to the nation, and the laws of the nation
whose lands he holds, and own no allegiance whatsoever to any
other prince, power, or people, or any obligation of obedience
or respect to their will, orders, or laws. I hold, further, and
firmly believe, that the enjoyment by the people of this right
of first ownership of the soil is essential to the vigour and
vitality of all other rights, to their validity, efficacy, and
value; to their secure possession and safe exercise. For let no
people deceive themselves, or be deceived by the words, and
colours, and phrases, and forms of a mock freedom, by
constitutions, and charters, and articles, and franchise. These
things are paper and parchment, waste and worthless. Let laws
and institutions say what they will, this fact will be stronger
than all laws, and prevail against them--the fact that those who
own your lands will make your laws, and command your liberties
and your lives. But this is tyranny and slavery; tyranny in its
widest scope and worst shape; slavery of body and soul, from the
cradle to the coffin--slavery with all its horrors, and with
none of its physical comforts and security; even as it is in
Ireland, where the whole community is made up of tyrants,
slaves, and slave-drivers....”
As to the question of dealing with land-owners, Lalor re-echoes Tone and
Davis:
“There are, however, many landlords, perhaps, and certainly a
few, not fairly chargeable with the crimes of their order; and
you may think it hard they should lose their lands. But
recollect the principle I assert would make Ireland, _in fact_,
as she is _of right_, mistress and queen of all those lands;
that she, poor lady, had ever a soft heart and grateful
disposition; and that she may, if she please, in reward of
allegiance, confer new titles or confirm the old. Let us crown
her a queen; and then--let her do with her lands as a queen may
do.
“In the case of any existing interest, of what nature soever, I
feel assured that no question but one would need to be answered.
Does the owner of that interest assent to swear allegiance to
the people of Ireland, and to hold in fee from the Irish nation?
If he assent he may be assured he will suffer no loss. No
eventual or permanent loss I mean; for some temporary loss he
must assuredly suffer. But such loss would be incidental and
inevitable to any armed insurrection whatever, no matter on what
principle the right of resistance should be resorted to. If he
refuses, then I say--away with him--out of this land with
him--himself and all his robber rights and all the things
himself and his rights have brought into our island--blood and
tears, and famine, and the fever that goes with famine.”
In the issue of the _Irish Felon_ for July 8, Lalor, expecting
suppression and arrest, wrote “The Faith of a Felon”--a statement which,
ill-framed and ill-connected though he knew it to be, he firmly believed
to “carry the fortunes of Ireland,” and sent “forth to its fate, to
conquer or be conquered.” It was conquered for the time, but, like such
immortal things, it was destined to rise again. In it Lalor re-affirmed
his principles and re-stated his programme. The idea of the ownership of
the soil by the whole people, which is his essential contribution to
modern political thought, was in this statement put more clearly even
than before:
“What forms the right of property in land? I have never read in
the direction of that question. I have all my life been
destitute of books. But from the first chapter of Blackstone’s
second book, the only page I ever read on the subject, I know
that jurists are unanimously agreed in considering ‘first
occupancy’ to be the only true original foundation on the right
of property and possession of land.
“Now, I am prepared to prove that ‘occupancy’ wants every
character and quality that could give it moral efficacy as a
foundation of right. I am prepared to prove this, when
‘occupancy’ has first been _defined_. If no definition can be
given, I am relieved from the necessity of showing any claim
founded on occupancy to be weak and worthless.
“To any plain understanding the right of private property is
very simple. It is the right of man to possess, enjoy, and
transfer the substance and use of whatever HE HAS HIMSELF
CREATED. This title is good against the world; and it is the
_sole_ and _only_ title by which a valid right of absolute
private property can possibly vest.
“But no man can plead any such title to a right of property in
the substance of the soil.
“The earth, together with all it _spontaneously_ produces, is
the free and common property of all mankind, of natural right,
and by the grant of God--and all men being equal, no man,
therefore, has a right, to appropriate exclusively to himself
any part or portion thereof, except with and by the _common
consent_ and _agreement_ of all other men.
“The sole original right of property in land which I acknowledge
to be morally valid, is this right of common consent and
agreement. Every other I hold to be fabricated and fictitious,
null, void, and of no effect.”
As for Lalor’s programme of action, it was in brief:
1. To refuse all rent and arrears beyond the value of the overplus
of harvest remaining after due provision for the tenants’
subsistence for twelve months.