THE IRISH QUESTION IN IRELAND.
Whilst attributing the long continued failure of English rule in Ireland
largely to a misunderstanding of the Irish mind, I have given
England--at least modern England--credit for good intentions towards us.
I now come to the case of the misunderstood, and shall from henceforth
be concerned with the immeasurably greater responsibility of the Irish
people themselves for their own welfare. The most characteristic, and by
far the most hopeful feature of the change in the Anglo-Irish situation
which took place in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and upon
the meaning of which I dwelt in the preceding chapter, is the growing
sense amongst us that the English misunderstanding of Ireland is of far
less importance, and perhaps less inexcusable, than our own
misunderstanding of ourselves.
When I first came into practical touch with the extraordinarily complex
problems of Irish life, nothing impressed me so much as the universal
belief among my countrymen that Providence had endowed them with
capacities of a high order, and their country with resources of
unbounded richness, but that both the capacities and the resources
remained undeveloped owing to the stupidity--or worse--of British rule.
It was asserted, and generally taken for granted, that the exiles of
Erin sprang to the front in every walk of life throughout the world, in
every country but their own--though I notice that in quite recent times
endeavours have been made to cool the emigration fever by painting the
fortunes of the Irish in America in the darkest colours. To suggest that
there was any use in trying at home to make the best of things as they
were was indicative of a leaning towards British rule; and to attempt to
give practical effect to such a heresy was to draw a red herring across
the path of true Nationalism.
It is not easy to account for the long continuance of this attitude of
the Irish mind towards Irish problems, which seems unworthy of the
native intelligence of the people. The truth probably is that while we
have not allowed our intellectual gifts to decay, they have been of
little use to us because we have neglected the second part of the old
Scholastic rule of life, and have failed to develop the moral qualities
in which we are deficient. Hence we have developed our critical
faculties, not, unhappily, along constructive lines. We have been
throughout alive to the muddling of our affairs by the English, and have
accurately gauged the incapacity of our governors to appreciate our
needs and possibilities. But we recognised their incapacity more readily
than our own deficiencies, and we estimated the failure of the English
far more justly than we apportioned the responsibility between our
rulers and ourselves. The sense of the duty and dignity of labour has
been lost in the contemplation of circumstances over which it was
assumed that we have no control.
It is a peculiarity of destructive criticism that, unlike charity, it
generally begins and ends abroad; and those who cultivate the gentle art
are seldom given to morbid introspection. Our prodigious ignorance about
ourselves has not been blissful. Mistaking self-assertion for
self-knowledge, we have presented the pathetic spectacle of a people
casting the blame for their shortcomings on another people, yet bearing
the consequences themselves. The national habit of living in the past
seems to give us a present without achievement, a future without hope.
The conclusion was long ago forced upon me that whatever may have been
true of the past, the chief responsibility for the remoulding of our
national life rests now with ourselves, and that in the last analysis
the problem of Irish ineffectiveness at home is in the main a problem of
character--and of Irish character.
I am quite aware that such a diagnosis of our mind disease--from which
Ireland is, in my belief, slowly but surely recovering--will not pass
unchallenged, but I would ask any reader who dissents from this view to
take a glance at the picture of our national life as it might unfold
itself to an unprejudiced but sympathetic outsider who came to Ireland
not on a political tour but with a sincere desire to get at the truth of
the Irish Question, and to inquire into the conditions about which all
the controversy continues to rage.
This hypothetical traveller would discover that our resources are but
half developed, and yet hundreds of thousands of our workers have gone,
and are still going, to produce wealth where it is less urgently needed.
The remnant of the race who still cling to the old country are not only
numerically weak, but in many other ways they show the physical and
moral effects of the drain which emigration has made on the youth,
strength, and energy of the community. Our four and a quarter millions
of people, mainly agricultural, have, speaking generally, a very low
standard of comfort, which they like to attribute to some five or six
millions sterling paid as agricultural rent, and three millions of
alleged over-taxation. They face the situation bravely--and,
incidentally, swell the over-taxation--with the help of the thirteen or
fourteen millions worth of alcoholic stimulants which they annually
consume. The still larger consumption in Great Britain may seem to lend
at least a respectability to this apparent over-indulgence, but it looks
odd. The people are endowed with intellectual capacities of a high
order. They have literary gifts and an artistic sense. Yet, with a few
brilliant exceptions, they contribute nothing to invention and create
nothing in literature or in art. One would say that there must be
something wrong with the education of the country; and most people
declare that it is too literary, though the Census returns show that
there are still large numbers who escape the tyranny of books. The
people have an extraordinary belief in political remedies for economic
ills; and their political leaders, who are not as a rule themselves
actively engaged in business life, tell the people, pointing to ruined
mills and unused water power, that the country once had diversified
industries, and that if they were allowed to apply their panacea,
Ireland would quickly rebuild her industrial life. If our hypothetical
traveller were to ask whether there are no other leaders in the country
besides the eloquent gentlemen who proclaim her helplessness, he would
be told that among the professional classes, the landlords, and the
captains of industry, are to be found as competent popular advisers as
are possessed by any other country of similar economic standing. But
these men take only a dilettante part in politics, and no value is set
on industrial, commercial or professional success in the choice of
public men. Can it be that to the Irish mind politics are, what Bulwer
Lytton declared love to be, "the business of the idle, and the idleness
of the busy"?
These, though only a few of the strange ironies of Irish life, are so
paradoxical and so anomalous that they are not unnaturally attributed to
the intrusion of an alien and unfriendly power; and this furnishes the
reason why everything which goes wrong is used to nourish the
anti-English sentiment. At the same time they give emphasis to the
growing doubt as to the wisdom of those to whom the Irish Question
presents itself only as a single and simple issue--namely, whether the
laws which are to put all these things right shall be made at St.
Stephen's by the collective wisdom of the United Kingdom, aided by the
voice of Ireland--which is adequately represented--or whether these laws
shall be made by Irishmen alone in a Parliament in College Green.
It is obviously necessary that, in presenting a comprehensive scheme for
dealing with the conditions I have roughly indicated. I should make some
reference to the attitude towards Home Rule of both the Nationalists and
the Unionists who have joined in work which, whatever be its
irregularity from the standpoint of party discipline as enforced in
Ireland, has succeeded in some degree in directing the energies of our
countrymen to the development of the resources of our country. Many of
my fellow-workers were Nationalists who, while stoutly adhering to the
prime necessity for constitutional changes, took the broad view, which
was unpopular among the Irish Party, that much could be done, even under
present conditions, to build up our national life on its social,
intellectual, and economic sides. The well-known constitutional changes
which were advocated in the political party to which they belonged would
then, they believed, be more effectively demanded by Ireland, and more
readily conceded by England. Unionists who worked with me were similarly
affected by the changing mental outlook of the country. They, too, had
to break loose from the traditions of an Irish party, for they felt that
the exclusively political opposition to Home Rule was not less
demoralising than the exclusively political pursuit of Home Rule. Just
as the Nationalists who joined the movement believed that all progress
must make for self-government, so my Unionist fellow-workers believed
it would ultimately strengthen the Union. Each view was thoroughly sound
from the standpoint of those who held it, and could be regarded with
respect by those who did not. We were all convinced that the way to
achieve what is best for Ireland was to develop what is best in
Irishmen. And it was the conviction that this can be done by Irishmen in
Ireland that brought together those whose thought and work supplies
whatever there may be of interest in this book.
If I have fairly stated the attitude towards each other of the workers
to whose coming together must be attributed as much of the change in the
Irish situation as is due to Irish initiation, it will be seen that what
had so long kept them apart in public affairs, outside politics, was a
difference of opinion, not so much as to the conditions to be dealt
with, nor, indeed, as to the end to be sought, but rather as to the
means most effective for the attainment of that end. I naturally regard
the view which I am putting forward as being broader than that which has
hitherto prevailed. Some Nationalists may, however, contend that it is
essential to progress that the thoughts and energies of the nation
should be focussed upon a single movement, and not dissipated in the
pursuit of a multiplicity of ideals. I quite admit the importance of
concentration. But I strongly hold that any movement which is closely
related to the main currents of the people's life and subservient to
their urgent economic necessities, and which gives free play to the
intellectual qualities, while strengthening the moral or industrial
character, cannot be held to conflict with any national programme of
work, without raising a strong presumption that there is something wrong
with the programme. The exclusively political remedy I shall discuss in
the next chapter, but here I propose to consider some of the problems
which the new movement seeks to solve without waiting for the political
millenium.
It is a commonplace that there are two Irelands, differing in race, in
creed, in political aspiration, and in what I regard as a more potent
factor than all the others put together--economic interest and
industrial pursuit. In the mutual misunderstanding of these two
Irelands, still more than in the misunderstanding of Ireland by England,
is to be found the chief cause of the still unsettled state of the Irish
Question. I shall not seek to apportion the blame between the two
sections of the population; but as the mists clear away and we can begin
to construct a united and contented Ireland, it is not only legitimate,
but helpful in the extreme, to assign to the two sections of our
wealth-producers their respective parts in repairing the fortunes of
their country. In such a discussion of future developments chief
prominence must necessarily be given to the problems affecting the life
of the majority of the people, who depend directly on the land, and
conduct the industry which produces by far the greater portion of the
wealth of the country. It is, of course, essential to the prosperity of
the whole community that the North should pursue and further develop
its own industrial and commercial life. That section of the community
has also, no doubt, economic and educational problems to face, but these
are much the same problems as those of industrial communities in other
parts of the United Kingdom[4]; and if they do not receive, vitally
important as is their solution to the welfare of Ireland, any large
share of attention in this book, it is because they are no part of what
is ordinarily understood by the Irish Question.
Nevertheless, the interest of the manufacturing population of Ulster in
the welfare of the Roman Catholic agricultural majority is not merely
that of an onlooker, nor even that of the other parts of the United
Kingdom, but something more. It is obvious that the internal trade of
the country depends mainly upon the demand of the rural population for
the output of the manufacturing towns, and that this demand must depend
on the volume of agricultural production. I think the importance of
developing the home market has not been sufficiently appreciated, even
by Belfast. The best contribution the Ulster Protestant population can
make to the solution of this question is to do what they can to bring
about cordial co-operation between the two great sections of the
wealth-producers of Ireland. They should, I would suggest, learn to take
a broader and more patriotic view of the problems of the Roman Catholic
and agricultural majority, upon the true nature of which I hope to be
able to throw some new light. My purpose will be doubly served if I
have, to some extent, brought home to the minds of my Northern friends
that there is in Ireland an unsettled question in which they are largely
concerned, a rightly unsatisfied people by helping whom they can best
help themselves.
The Irish Question is, then, in that aspect which must be to Irishmen of
paramount importance, the problem of a national existence, chiefly an
agricultural existence, in Ireland. To outside observers it is the
question of rural life, a question which is assuming a social and
economic importance and interest of the most intense character, not only
for Ireland North and South, but for almost the whole civilised world.
It is becoming increasingly difficult in many parts of the world to keep
the people on the land, owing to the enormously improved industrial
opportunities and enhanced social and intellectual advantages of urban
life. The problem can be better examined in Ireland than elsewhere, for
with us it can, to a large extent, be isolated, since we have little
highly developed town life. Our rural exodus takes our people, for the
most part, not into Irish or even into British towns, but into those of
the United States. What is migration in other countries is emigration
with us, and the mind of the country, brooding over the dreary
statistics of this perennial drain, naturally and longingly turns to
schemes for the rehabilitation of rural life--the only life it knows.
We cannot exercise much direct influence upon the desire to emigrate
beyond spreading knowledge as to the real conditions of life in America,
for which home life in Ireland is often ignorantly bartered.[5] We
cannot isolate the phenomenon of emigration and find a cure for it apart
from the rest of the Irish Question. We must recognise that emigration
is but the chief symptom of a low national vitality, and that the first
result of our efforts to stay the tide may increase the outflow. We
cannot fit the people to stay without fitting them to go. Before we can
keep the people at home we have got to construct a national life with,
in the first place, a secure basis of physical comfort and decency. This
life must have a character, a dignity, an outlook of its own. A
comfortable Boeotia will never develop into a real Hibernia Pacata. The
standard of living may in some ways be lower than the English standard:
in some ways it may be higher. But even if statesmanship and all the
forces of philanthropy and patriotism combined can construct a contented
rural Ireland for the people, it can only be maintained by the people.
It will have to accord with the national sentiment and be distinctively
Irish. It is this national aspiration, and the remarkable promise of the
movements making for its fruition, which give to the work of Irish
social and economic reform the fascination which those who do not know
the Ireland of to-day cannot understand. This work of reform must, of
course, be primarily economic, but economic remedies cannot be applied
to Irish ills without the spiritual aids which are required to move to
action the latent forces of Irish reason and emotion.
* * * * *
The task which we have to face is, then, a two-sided one, but its
economic and its purely practical aspects first demand consideration.
Many even of the agrarian aspects of the question have, so far, been
somewhat neglected in Ireland owing to a cause which is not far to seek.
It has often been asserted that the Irish Question is, at bottom, the
Land Question. There is a great deal of truth in this view, but almost
all those who hold it have fallen into the grave error of tacitly
identifying the land question with the tenure question--an error which
vitiates a great deal of current theorising about Ireland. It was,
indeed, inevitable that Irish agriculturists, with such an economic
history behind them as I have outlined in the previous chapter, should
have concentrated their attention during the latter half of the
nineteenth century upon obtaining a legislative cure for the ills
produced by legislation, to the comparative neglect of those equally
difficult, if less obvious economic questions, which have been brought
into special prominence by the agricultural depression of the last
quarter of a century. Now, however, that the Land Act of 1903 has been
passed and the solution of the tenure question is in sight, we in
Ireland are more free to direct our attention to what is at present the
most important aspect of the agrarian situation--the necessity for
determining the social and economic conditions essential to the
well-being of the peasant proprietary, which, though it is to be started
with as bright an outlook as the law can give, must stand or fall by its
own inherent merits or defects. Not only are we now free to give
adequate consideration to this question, but it is also imperative that
we should do so, for whilst I am hopeful that the Land Act will settle
the question of tenure, it will obviously not merely leave the other
problems of agricultural existence--problems some of which are not
unknown in other parts of the United Kingdom--still unsolved, but will
also increase the necessity for their solution, and will, moreover,
bring in its train complex difficulties of its own.
The main features of the depressing outlook of rural life in the United
Kingdom are well known. The land steadily passes from under the plough
and is given over to stock raising. As the kine increase the men decay.
In Ireland the rural exodus takes, as I have already said, the shape,
mainly, not of migration to Irish urban centres, but rather the uglier
form of an emigration which not only depletes our population but drains
it of the very elements which can least be spared.
The reason generally given for the widespread resort to the lotus-eating
occupation of opening and shutting gates, in preference to tilling the
soil, is that in the existing state of agricultural organisation, and
while urban life is ever drawing away labour from the fields, the
substitution of pasturage for tillage is the readiest way to meet the
ruinous competition of Eastern Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and
Australasia. Yet upon the economic merits of this process I have heard
the most diverse opinions stated with equal conviction by men thoroughly
well informed as to the conditions. One of the largest graziers in
Ireland recently gave me a picture of what he considered to be an ideal
economic state for the country. If two more Belfasts could be
established on the east coast, and the rest of the country divided into
five hundred acre farms, grazing being adopted wherever permanent grass
would grow, the limits of Irish productivity would be reached. On the
other hand, Dr. O'Donnell, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Raphoe, who may
be taken as an authoritative exponent of the trend of popular thought in
the country, not long ago advocated ploughing the grazing lands of
Leinster right up to the slopes of Tara.[6] Moreover, many theories have
been advanced to show that the decline of tillage, whatever be its
cause, involves an enormous waste of national resources. But of
practical suggestion, making for a remedy, there is very little
forthcoming.
The solution of all such problems largely depends upon certain
developments which, for many reasons, I regard as absolutely essential
to the success of the new agrarian order. One of these developments is
the spread of agricultural co-operation through voluntary associations.
Without this agency of social and economic progress, small landholders
in Ireland will be but a body of isolated units, having all the
drawbacks of individualism, and none of its virtues, unorganised and
singularly ill-equipped for that great international struggle of our
time, which we know as agricultural competition. Moreover, there is
another equally important, if less obvious, consideration which renders
urgent the organisation of our rural communities. From Russia, with its
half-communistic Mir to France with its modern village commune, there is
no country in Europe except the United Kingdom where the peasant
land-holders have not some form of corporate existence. In Ireland the
transition from landlordism to a peasant proprietary not only does not
create any corporate existence among the occupying peasantry but rather
deprives them of the slight social coherence which they formerly
possessed as tenants of the same landlord. The estate office has its
uses as well as its disadvantages, and the landlord or agent is by no
means without his value as a business adviser to those from whom he
collects the rent.
The organisation of the peasantry by an extension of voluntary
associations, which is a condition precedent of social and economic
progress, will not, however, suffice to enable them to face and solve
the problems with which they are confronted, and whose solution has now
become a matter of very serious concern to the British taxpayer. The
condition of our agrarian life clearly indicates the necessity for
supplementing voluntary effort with a sound system of State aid to
agriculture and industry--a necessity fully recognised by the
governments of every progressive continental country and of our own
colonies. An altogether hopeful beginning of combined self-help and
State assistance has been already made. Those who have been studying
these problems, and practically preparing the way for the proper care of
a peasant proprietary, have overcome the chief obstacles which lay in
their path. They have gained popular acceptance for the principle that
State aid should not be resorted to until organised voluntary effort has
first been set in motion, and that any departure from this principle
would be an unwarrantable interference with the business of the people,
a fatal blow to private enterprise.[7]
The task before the people, and before the State, of placing the new
agrarian order upon a permanent basis of decency and comfort is no light
one. Indeed, I doubt whether Parliament realises one-tenth of the
problems which the latest land legislation--by far the best we have yet
had--leaves unsolved. This becomes only too clear the moment we consider
seriously the fundamental question of the relation of population to area
in rural Ireland, or, in other words, when we inquire how many people
the agricultural land will support under existing circumstances, or
under any attainable improvement of the conditions in our rural life.
Roughly speaking, the surface area of the island is 20,000,000 acres, of
which 5,000,000 are described in the official returns as 'barren
mountain, bog and waste.' This leaves us with some 15,000,000 acres
available for agriculture and grazing, which area is now divided into
some 500,000 holdings. Thus we have an average of thirty acres in extent
for the Irish agricultural holding. But, unhappily, the returns show
that some 200,000 of these holdings are from one to fifteen acres in
extent. Nor do the mere figures show the case at its worst. For it
happens that the small holdings in Ireland, unlike those on the
Continent, are generally on the poorest land, and the majority of them
cannot come within any of the definitions of an 'economic holding.'
These 200,000 holdings, the homes of nearly a million persons, threaten
to prove the greatest danger to the future of agricultural Ireland. As
the majority of them, as at present constituted, do not provide the
physical basis of a decent standard of living, the question arises, how
are they to be improved? Putting aside emigration, which at one period
was necessary and ought to have been aided and controlled by the State,
but which is now no longer a statesman's remedy, there is obviously no
solution except by the migration of a portion of the occupiers, and the
utilisation of the vacated holdings in order to enable the peasants who
remain to prosper--much as a forest is thinned to promote the growth of
trees. In typical congested districts this operation will have to be
carried out on a much larger scale than is generally realised, for a
considerable majority of families will have to be removed, in order to
allow a sufficient margin for the provision of adequate holdings for
those who remain. In some cases, there are large grazing tracts in close
proximity to the congested area which might be utilised for the
re-settlement, but where this is not so and the occupiers of the vacated
holdings have to migrate a considerable distance, the problem becomes
far more difficult. I need not dwell upon the administrative
difficulties of the operation, which are not light. I may assume, also,
that there will be no difficulty in obtaining suitable land somewhere. I
do not myself attach much weight to the unwillingness of the people to
leave their old holdings for better ones, or to the alleged objection of
the clergy to allow their parishioners to go to another parish. More
serious is the possible opposition of those who live in the vicinity of
the unoccupied land about to be distributed, and who feel that they have
the first claim upon the State in any scheme for its redistribution with
the help of public credit. Mr. Parnell promoted a company with the sole
object of practically demonstrating how this problem could be solved. A
large capital was raised, and a large estate purchased; but the company
did not effect the migration of a single family. Still these are minor
considerations compared with the larger one, to which I must briefly
refer.
Under the Land Act of 1903 much has been done to facilitate the transfer
of peasants to new farms, but it is obvious that land cannot be handed
over as a gift from the State to the families which migrate. They will
become debtors for the value of the land itself, less perhaps a small
sum which may be credited to them in respect of the tenant's interest in
the holdings they have abandoned. This deduction will, however, be lost
in the expenditure required upon houses, buildings, fences, and other
improvements which would have to be effected before the land could be
profitably occupied. Speaking generally they will have no money or
agricultural implements, and their live stock will in many cases be
mortgaged to the local shopkeeper who has always financed them. It will
be necessary for the future welfare of the country to give them land
which admits of cultivation upon the ordinary principles of modern
agriculture; but without working capital, and bringing with them neither
the skill nor the habits necessary for the successful conduct of their
industry under the new conditions, it will be no easy task to place them
in a position to discharge their obligations to the State. It is all
very easy to talk about the obvious necessity of giving more land to
cultivators who have not enough to live upon; and there is, no doubt, a
poetic justice in the Utopian agrarianism which dangles before the eyes
of the Connaught peasantry the alternative of Heaven or Leinster. But
when we come down to practical economics, and face the task of giving to
a certain number of human beings, in an extremely backward industrial
condition, the opportunity of placing themselves and their families on a
basis of permanent well-being, it will be evident that, so far, at any
rate, as this particular community is concerned, the mere provision of
an economic holding is after all but a part of an economic existence.
I have touched upon this question of migration from uneconomic to
economic holdings because it signally illustrates the importance of the
human, in contradistinction to the merely material considerations
involved in the solution of the many-sided Irish Question. I must now
return to the wider question of the relation of population to area in
rural Ireland, as it affects the general scheme of agricultural and
industrial development.
It is obvious that there must be a limit to the number of individuals
that the land can support. Allowing an average of five members for each
family, and allowing for a considerable number of landless labourers, it
seems that the land at present directly supports about 2,500,000
persons--a view which, I may add, is fully borne out by the figures of
the recent census; and it is hard to see how a population living by
agriculture can be much increased beyond this number. Even if all the
land in Ireland were available for re-distribution in equal shares, the
higher standard of comfort to which it is essential that the condition
of our people should be raised would forbid the existence of much more
than half a million peasant proprietors.[8] Hence the evergreen query,
'What shall we do with our boys?' remains to be answered; for while the
abolition of dual ownership will enable the present generation to bring
up their children according to a higher standard of living, the change
will not of itself provide a career for the children when they have been
brought up. The next generation will have to face this problem:--the
average farm can support only one of the children and his family, what
is to become of the others? The law forbids sub-division for two
generations, and after that, _ex hypothesi_, the then prevailing
conditions of life will also prevent such partition. A few of the next
generation may become agricultural labourers, but this involves
descending to the lowest standard of living of to-day, and in any case
the demand for agricultural labourers is not capable of much extension
in a country of small peasant proprietors.
Against this view I know it is pointed out that in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century the agricultural population of Ireland was as
large as is the total population of to-day; but we know the sequel.
Instances are also cited of peasant proprietaries in foreign countries
which maintain a high standard of living upon small, sometimes
diminutive, and highly-rented holdings. We must remember, however, that
in these foreign countries State intervention has undoubtedly done much
to render possible a prosperous peasant proprietary by, for example, the
dissemination of useful information, admirable systems of technical
education in agriculture, cheap and expeditious transport, and even
State attention to the distribution of agricultural produce in distant
markets. Again, in many of these countries rural life is balanced by a
highly industrial town life, as, for instance, in the case of Belgium;
or is itself highly industrialised by the existence of rural industries,
as in the case of Switzerland; while in one notable instance--that of
Württemberg--both these conditions prevail.
The true lesson to be drawn from these foreign analogies is that not by
agriculture alone is Ireland to be saved. The solution of the rural
problem embraces many spheres of national activity. It involves, as I
have already said, the further development of manufactures in Irish
towns. One of the best ways to stimulate our industries is to develop
the home market by means of an increased agricultural production, and a
higher standard of comfort among the peasant producers. We shall thus
be, so to speak, operating on consumption as well as on production, and
so increasing the home demand for Irish manufactures. Perhaps more
urgent than the creation or extension of manufactures on a larger scale
is the development of industries subsidiary to agriculture in the
country. This is generally admitted, and most people have a fair
knowledge of the wide and varied range of peasant industries in all
European countries where a prosperous peasantry exists. Nor is there
much difficulty in agreeing upon the main conditions to be satisfied in
the selection of the industries to meet the requirements of our case.
The men and boys require employment in the winter months, or they will
not stay, and the rural industries promoted should, as far as possible,
be those which allow of intermittent attention. The female members of
the family must have profitable and congenial employment. The
handicrafts to be promoted must be those which will give scope to the
native genius and aesthetic sense. But unless we can thus supply the
demand of the peasant-industry market with products of merit or
distinctiveness, we shall fail in competition with the hereditary skill
and old established trade of peasant proprietors which have solved this
part of the problem generations ago. This involves the vigorous
application of a class of instruction of which something will be said
in the proper place.
So far the rural industry problem, and the direction in which its
solution is to be found, are fairly clear. But there is one disadvantage
with which we have to reckon, and which for many other reasons besides
the one I am now immediately concerned with, we must seek to remove. A
community does not naturally or easily produce for export that for which
it has itself no use, taste, or desire. Whatever latent capacity for
artistic handicrafts the Irish peasant may possess, it is very rarely
that one finds any spontaneous attempt to give outward expression to the
inward aesthetic sense. And this brings me to a strange aspect of Irish
life to which I have often wished, on the proper occasion, to draw
public attention. The matter arises now in the form of a peculiar
difficulty which lies in the path of those who endeavour to solve the
problem of rural life in Ireland, and which, in my belief, has
profoundly affected the fortunes of the race both at home and abroad.
To a sympathetic insight there is a singular and significant void in the
Irish conception of a home--I mean the lack of appreciation for the
comforts of a home, which might never have been apparent to me had it
not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic
progress.[9] In the Irish love of home, as in the larger national
aspirations, the ideal has but a meagre material basis, its appeal being
essentially to the social and intellectual instincts. It is not the
physical environment and comfort of an orderly home that enchain and
attract minds still dominated, more or less unconsciously, by the
associations and common interests of the primitive clan, but rather the
sense of human neighbourhood and kinship which the individual finds in
the community. Indeed the Irish peasant scarcely seems to have a home in
the sense in which an Englishman understands the word. If he love the
place of his habitation he does not endeavour to improve or to adorn it,
or indeed to make it in any sense a reflection of his own mind and
taste. He treats life as if he were a mere sojourner upon earth whose
true home is somewhere else, a fact often attributed to his intense
faith in the unseen, but which I regard as not merely due to this cause,
but also, and in a large measure, as the natural outcome of historical
conditions, to which I shall presently refer.
What the Irishman is really attached to in Ireland is not a home but a
social order. The pleasant amenities, the courtesies, the leisureliness,
the associations of religion, and the familiar faces of the neighbours,
whose ways and minds are like his and very unlike those of any other
people; these are the things to which he clings in Ireland and which he
remembers in exile. And the rawness and eagerness of America, the lust
of the eye and the pride of life that meet him, though with no welcoming
aspect, at every turn, the sense of being harshly appraised by new
standards of the nature of which he has but the dimmest conception, his
helplessness in the fierce current of industrial life in which he is
plunged, the climatic extremes of heat and cold, the early hours and few
holidays: all these experiences act as a rude shock upon the
ill-balanced refinement of the Irish immigrant. Not seldom, he or she
loses heart and hope and returns to Ireland mentally and physically a
wreck, a sad disillusionment to those who had been comforted in the
agony of the leave-taking by the assurance that to emigrate was to
succeed.
The peculiar Irish conception of a home has probably a good deal to do
with the history of the Irish in the United States. It is well known
that whatever measure of success the Irish emigrant has there achieved
is pre-eminently in the American city, and not where, according to all
the usual commonplaces about the Irish race, they ought to have
succeeded, in American rural life. There they were afforded, and there
they missed, the greatest opportunity which ever fell to the lot of a
people agriculturally inclined. During the days of the great emigrations
from Ireland, a veritable Promised Land, rich beyond the dreams of
agricultural avarice, was gradually opened up between the Alleghanies
and the Rocky Mountains, which the Irish had only to occupy in order to
possess. Making all allowances for the depressing influences which had
been brought to bear upon the spirit of enterprise, and for their
impoverished condition, I am convinced that a prime cause of the failure
of almost every effort to settle them upon the land was the fact that
the tenement house, with all its domestic abominations, provided the
social order which they brought with them from Ireland, and the lack of
which on the western prairie no immediate or prospective physical
comfort could make good.
Recently a daughter of a small farmer in County Galway with a family too
'long' for the means of subsistence available, was offered a comfortable
home on a farm owned by some better-off relatives, only thirty miles
away, though probably twenty miles beyond the limits of her utmost
peregrinations. She elected in preference to go to New York, and being
asked her reason by a friend of mine, replied in so many words, 'because
it is nearer.' She felt she would be less of a stranger in a New York
tenement house, among her relatives and friends who had already
emigrated, than in another part of County Galway. Educational science in
Ireland has always ignored the life history of the subject with which it
dealt. In no respect has this neglect been so unconsciously cruel as in
its failure to implant in the Irish mind that appreciation of the
material aspects of the home which the people so badly need both in
Ireland and in America If the Irishman abroad became 'a rootless
colonist of alien earth,' the lot of the Irishman in Ireland has been
not less melancholy. Sadness there is, indeed, in the story of 'the
sea-divided Gael,' but, to me, it is incomparably less pathetic than
their homelessness at home.
There are, as I have said, historic reasons for the Celtic view of home
to which my personal observation and experience has induced me to devote
so much space. The Irish people have never had the opportunity of
developing that strong and salutary individualism which, amongst other
things, imperiously demands, as a condition of its growth, a home that
shall be a man's castle as well as his abiding place. In this, as in so
much else, a healthy evolution was constantly thwarted by the clash of
two peoples and two civilisations. The Irish had hardly emerged from the
nomad pastoral stage, when the first of that series of invasions, which
had all the ferocity, without the finality of conquest, made settled
life impossible over the greater part of the island. An old chronicle
throws some vivid light upon the way in which the idea of home life
presented itself to the mind of the clan chiefs as late as the days of
the Tudors. "Con O'Neal," we are told, "was so right Irish that he
cursed all his posterity in case they either learnt English, sowed wheat
or built them houses; lest the first should breed conversation, the
second commerce, and with the last they should speed as the crow that
buildeth her nest to be beaten out by the hawk."[10] The penal laws,
again, acted as a disintegrant of the home and the family; and,
finally, the paralysing effect of the abuses of a system of land tenure,
under which evidences of thrift and comfort might at any time become
determining factors in the calculation of rent, completed a series of
causes which, in unison or isolation, were calculated to destroy at its
source the growth of a wholesome domesticity. These causes happily, no
longer exist, and powerful forces are arising to overcome the defects
and disadvantages which they have bequeathed to us; and I have little
doubt that it will be possible to deal successfully with this obstacle
which adds so peculiar a feature to the problem of rural life in
Ireland.
If I have dwelt at what may appear to be a disproportionate length upon
the Irishman's peculiar conception of a home, it is because this
difficulty, which Irish social and economic reformers still encounter,
and with which they must deal sympathetically if they are to succeed in
the work of national regeneration, strikingly illustrates the two-sided
character of the Irish Question and the never-to-be-forgotten
inter-dependence of the sentimental and the practical in Ireland. I
admit that this condition which adds to the interest of the problem, and
perhaps makes it more amenable to rapid solution, is an indication of a
weakness of moral fibre to which must be largely attributed our failure
to be master of our circumstances. Indeed, as I come into closer touch
with the efforts which are now being made to raise the material
condition of the people, the more convinced I become, much as my
practical training has made me resist the conviction, that the Irish
Question is, in its most difficult and most important aspects, the
problem of the Irish mind, and that the solution of this problem is to
be found in the strengthening of Irish character.
With this enunciation of the main proposition of my book, I may now
indicate the order in which I shall endeavour to establish its truth. I
have said enough to show that I do not ignore the historical causes of
our present state; but with so many facts with which we can deal
confronting us, I propose to review the chief living influences to which
the Irish mind and character are still subjected. These influences fall
naturally into three distinct categories and will be treated in the
three succeeding chapters. The first will show the effect upon the Irish
mind of its obsession by politics. The next will deal with the influence
of religious systems upon the secular life of the people. I shall then
show how education, which should not only have been the most potent of
all the three influences in bringing our national life into line with
the progress of the age, but should also have modified the operation of
the other two causes, has aggravated rather than cured the malady.
Whatever impression I may succeed in making upon others, I may here
state that, as the result of observation and reflection, the conclusion
has been forced upon me that the Irish mind is suffering from
considerable functional derangement, but not, so far as I can discern,
from any organic disease. This is the basis of my optimism. I shall
submit in another chapter, which will conclude the first, the critical
part of my book, certain new principles of treatment which are indicated
by the diagnosis; and I would ask the reader, before he rejects the
opinions which are there expressed, to persevere through the narrative
contained in the second part of the book. There he will find in process
of solution some of the problems which I have indicated, and the
principles for which a theoretical approval has been asked, in practical
operation, and already passing out of the experimental stage. The story
of the Self-help Movement will strike the note of Ireland's economic
hopes. The action of the Recess Committee will be explained, and the
concession of their demand by the establishment of a 'Department of
Agriculture and other rural industries and for Technical Instruction for
Ireland,' will be described. This will complete the story of a quiet,
unostentatious movement which will some day be seen to have made the
last decade of the nineteenth century a fit prelude to a future
commensurate with the potentialities of the Irish people.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] I speak from personal knowledge when I say that the leaders of Irish
industry and commerce are fully alive to the practical consideration
which they have now to devote to the new conditions by which they are
surrounded. They recognise that the intensified foreign competition
which harasses them is due chiefly to German education and American
enterprise. They are deep in the consideration of the form which
technical education should take to meet their peculiar needs; and I am
confident that Ulster will make a sound and useful contribution to the
solution of the commercial and industrial problems which confront the
manufacturers of the United Kingdom.
[5] That such a knowledge is still required, though the need is becoming
less urgent, is shown by an incident which illustrates the pathos of the
Irish exodus. A poor woman once asked me to help her son to emigrate to
America, and I agreed to pay his passage. Early in the negotiations,
finding that she was somewhat vague as to her boy's prospects, I asked
her whether he wanted to go to North or South America. This detail she
seemed to consider immaterial. "Ach, glory be to God, I lave that to yer
honner. Why wouldn't I?" Had I shipped him to Peru she would have been
quite satisfied. Why wouldn't she?
[6] Yet another view which seems to uproot most agrarian ideas in
Ireland has been put forward by Dr. O'Gara in _The Green Republic_
(Fisher Unwin, 1902). His main conclusion is that the present disastrous
state of our rural economy is due to our treating land as an object of
property and not of industry. He advocates the cultivation of the land
by syndicates holding farms of 20,000 acres and tilling them by the
lavish application of modern machinery as the only way to meet American
competition. His book is able and suggestive, but it is perhaps, a work
of supererogation to discuss a theory the whole moral of which is the
expediency of absolutely divorcing the functions of the proprietor and
the manager of land at a time when the consensus of opinion in Ireland
is in favour of uniting them, and in view of the fact that under the new
Land Act the future of the country seems inevitably to lie for a long
time in the hands of a peasant proprietary.
[7] The reader may wonder why I touch so lightly upon a fact of such
profound significance as the Irishman's acceptance of self-help as a
condition precedent of State aid in the development of agriculture and
industry. But such a cursory treatment, in the early chapters, of this
and of other equally important aspects of the Irish situation is
necessitated by the plan I have adopted. I am attempting to give in the
first part of the book a philosophic insight into the chief Irish
problems, and then, in the second part of the book, to present the facts
which appear to me to illustrate these problems in process of solution.
[8] The best expert agricultural opinion tells me that under present
conditions a family cannot live in any decent standard of comfort--such
as I hope to see prevail in Ireland--on less than 30 acres of Irish
land, taking the bad land with the good.
[9] It is, of course, unnecessary for me to dwell upon the part played
by the home in the standard of living, especially amongst a rural
community. But it may not be irrelevant to note that M. Desmolins, who,
in his remarkable book, _A quoi tient la superiorité des Anglo-saxons_?
hands over the future of civilisation to the Anglo-Saxons, ascribes to
the English rural home much of the success of the race.
[10] Speed's Chronicle, quoted in _Calendar of State Papers, Ireland,_
1611-14, p. xix.