UNIONISM IN IRELAND
"When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only
effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an
unalterable fool. There are always a set of worthy and
moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every
valuable change which the varying aspect of human affairs
absolutely and imperiously requires ... I admit that to a
certain extent the Government will lose the affections of the
Orangemen ... but you must perceive that it is better to have
four friends and one enemy than four enemies and one friend."
--SYDNEY SMITH, _Letters of Peter Plymley_, 1807.
From the outcry which arose in the last years of the late Government at
the revelations which came to be known as the MacDonnell mystery one
would have thought that Conservatives could look back to a record
unstained by any traffic with the unclean thing for which they express
such horror. I will try to show how small is the measure of truth in
this belief, and in what manner it has proved impossible to maintain the
_status quo_ in the teeth of democratic feeling without _pourparlers_
behind the scenes, even when in the open such dealings have had perforce
to be denounced as impossible.
Twenty-five years ago the rigid application of the Crimes Act by Lord
Spencer, the Viceroy, after the Phoenix Park murders had put an end to
the "Kilmainham Treaty," and the failure on the part of the Government
to amend the Land Act of 1881, together with the sympathetic attitude of
Lord Randolph Churchill, then conducting his guerilla tactics as leader
of the Fourth Party, all served to make opposition on the part of the
Irish members to the Liberal Government increase, and it was by their
aid that in June, 1885, it was thrown out of office on a defeat by
twelve votes on the Budget. Lord Salisbury then took office with his
"ministry of care-takers," with a minority in the House of Commons, for
a general election could not take place until the provisions of the new
Franchise Act had come into force.
Colour was lent to the general impression which was abroad that the
Conservatives were flirting with Home Rule by the appointment to the
Lord Lieutenancy with a seat in the Cabinet of Lord Carnarvon, the
statesman who had established federation in Canada and had attempted to
bring it about in South Africa, who was familiar with the machinery of
subordinate legislatures and Colonial parliaments, and whose sympathies
with the Irish people were to be inferred from the fact that he had
voted for Disestablishment in 1869, and for the Land Bill of the
following year, in a speech on which measure he had urged the House of
Lords not to delay concession till it could no longer have the charm of
free consent, nor be regulated by the counsels of prudent statesmanship.
The defeat of the Liberals had been primarily due to the revolt on the
part of the radical section over the question of whether a new Coercion
Bill should be introduced. In the light of this fact special importance
was attached to the declaration, made in the House of Lords, as to the
Irish policy of the Government, the more so because in an unprecedented
manner not the Premier but the Viceroy was the spokesman. He began by a
repudiation of coercion, with which he declared the recent
enfranchisement of the Irish people would not be consistent. "My Lords,"
he went on to say, speaking of the general question, "I do not believe
that with honesty and singlemindedness of purpose on the one side, and
with the willingness of the Irish people on the other, it is hopeless to
look for some satisfactory solution of this terrible question. My
Lords, these I believe to be the opinions and views of my colleagues."
A further step in securing Irish support occurred at the end of July,
and perhaps of all the strange events which have occurred in the
government of Ireland it is the strangest. Lord Carnarvon solicited
through one of his colleagues, and obtained, an interview with Mr.
Parnell, and the circumstances under which this occurred between the
Queen's Lord Lieutenant and the leader to whom men attributed treason
and condoning assassinations is perhaps the most curious part of the
whole story.
The meeting took place at the very end of the London season, not in the
Houses of Parliament nor in a club of which one or other of the parties
was a member, but in an empty house in Grosvenor Square, from which all
the servants had gone away. It is a piquant feature of the event,
shrouded as it was with all these circumstances of mystery, that the
gentleman who was in the secret and offered his house for the meeting
was no other than that rigid Imperialist, Col. Sir Howard Vincent, who
had only the year before retired from the Criminal Investigation
Department at Scotland Yard. When the occurrence of this interview
became known, nearly a year later, Mr. Parnell declared--and the fact
was never denied by Lord Carnarvon--that the latter had pronounced
himself in favour of an Irish Parliament with the power of protecting
Irish industries. The insistence by the Viceroy that he spoke only for
himself appeared to the Irish leader to be mere formality, but in truth
the Cabinet knew nothing of the interview. Lord Salisbury was informed
that it was going to take place, raised no objection to its occurrence,
and on receiving afterwards, both _verbatim_ and in writing, accounts of
what had occurred, praised the discretion of his Viceroy.
In view of what had happened it was not surprising that in the month of
August Mr. Parnell made an explicit demand for the restoration of
Grattan's Parliament, with the right of taxing foreign and even English
imports for the benefit of the Irish home trade--a proposal not so
revolutionary as it would now appear, seeing that less than forty years
had elapsed since the Irish Custom House had for the first time begun to
admit all English goods duty free.
Mr. Parnell's manifesto was followed by Lord Salisbury's speech at
Newport, from which quotation has already been made, in which he
expressed himself of opinion that Home Rule would be safer than popular
local government, and further enhanced the impression that he was moving
in the direction of the safer policy, by proceeding to frame what has
been described as the nearest approach to an apologia for boycotting
which has ever been made by an English statesman. The election address
of Lord Randolph Churchill--the most popular and influential minister in
the country--contained no allusion to the threatened "dismemberment of
the Empire," and in his campaign his only allusion to Ireland was
comprised in boasts of the success of the anti-coercion policy of
Carnarvon; while Sir John Gorst, who had been Solicitor-General,
referred in his election address in disparaging terms to "the
reactionary Ulster members." All the symptoms pointed in the one
direction of an alliance between Salisbury and Parnell on the basis of a
scheme for self-government, and an additional point was given to the
indications in that direction by the fact that Mr. Chamberlain and Lord
Hartington, at variance on most points of policy, were united in
opposition to Mr. Parnell's demand.
The statesmanlike manner in which at this juncture Mr. Gladstone
endeavoured, as he himself put it, to keep the strife of nations from
forming the dividing line between parties, has become very apparent with
the recent publication of documents of the period. Two years before, he
had told the Queen that the Irish question could only be settled by a
conjunction of parties, and on December 20th, 1885, he wrote to the
Conservative leader on the urgency of the Irish question, and declared
that it would be a public calamity if this great subject should fall
into lines of party conflict. If Salisbury would bring forward a
proposal for settling the whole question of future government in Ireland
he would treat it in the same spirit as that which he had shown in the
matters of Afghanistan and the Balkans, and he illustrated the
advantages which such a spirit of concession could produce by the
conferences on the Reform Bill, and the fact that the existing
Conservative ministry had been maintained in office by Liberal
forbearance. "His hypocrisy," wrote a minister to whom this letter had
been shown, "makes me sick." In this connection a letter from Lord
Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, written on the following day, is
of interest:--
"Labouchere came to see me this morning.... He proceeded to tell me
that, on Sunday week last, Lord Carnarvon had met Justin MacCarthy and
had confided to him that he was in favour of Home Rule in some shape,
but that his colleagues and his party were not ready, and asked whether
Justin MacCarthy's party would agree to an inquiry which he thought
there was a chance of the Government agreeing to, and which would
educate his colleagues and his party if granted and carried through. I
was consternated, but replied that such a statement was an obvious lie,
but, between ourselves, I fear it is not, perhaps not even an
exaggeration or a misrepresentation. Justin MacCarthy is on the staff of
the _Daily News_, Labouchere is one of the proprietors, and I cannot
imagine any motive for his inventing such a statement. If it is true
Lord Carnarvon has played the devil."[21]
With regard to the overtures which Mr. Gladstone had made, for which
precedents in plenty were supplied by the repeal of the Test Act in
1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Repeal of the Corn Laws in
1848, and the extension of the franchise in 1867, Lord Salisbury saw in
it only anxiety to take office on the part of his great opponent, and
prophesied that if his hunger were not prematurely gratified he would be
forced into some line of conduct which would be discreditable to him and
disastrous, and when the Liberal leader on the 23rd again pressed for a
definite answer to his approaches he was refused a communication of
views.
"Thus idly," says Mr. Winston Churchill, "drifted away what was perhaps
the best hope of the settlement of Ireland which that generation was to
see."
The view which Mr. Gladstone took of the events of the winter of 1885-6
is illustrated by a memorandum which he wrote in 1897, in which he
says:--
"I attached value to the acts and language of Lord Carnarvon and the
other favourable manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much
evidence of a deliberate intention to deceive the Irish with a view to
their support at the election."[22]
The attitude of the Tories and the rankling memory of the bitter debates
on the Liberal Coercion Bill of 1882, coupled with the attitude of the
Tories and the deception which they practised, resulted, not
unnaturally, in the fact that Parnell threw his weight in favour of the
Conservatives at the general election which ensued, and by this means,
it is estimated, lost at least twenty seats to the Liberals. Immediately
after the election the Viceroy and the Chief Secretary retired, but
though their successors were appointed in the third week in December, it
was not till the middle of January that the resignations were made
public. The first act of the new Chief Secretary was to announce that,
in spite of the emphatic disclaimers of the previous June, a Coercion
Bill was to be introduced, and as a result of the Irish voting with the
Liberals the Tories were defeated, and Mr. Gladstone took office. The
Home Rule Bill which was introduced was thrown out in the month of June,
the Government being in a minority of thirty. Had it not been for
Parnell's manifesto, urging Irishmen in Great Britain to vote for
Conservatives, the Government would have had a majority of between ten
and twenty, and, moreover, if a general election had followed, the
morale of the Liberals would have been much greater if they had been
fighting for the second time within a few months shoulder to shoulder
with the Irishmen, and not been in the position in which in fact they
were--of enjoying the support in June of those who had opposed them in
November.
Let us now turn to the MacDonnell incident. One of the first acts of Mr.
Balfour, on becoming Prime Minister in July, 1902, on the retirement of
Lord Salisbury was to give Mr. Wyndham, the Chief Secretary, a seat in
the Cabinet. In September Mr. Wyndham appointed as Under Secretary Sir
Antony MacDonnell, a distinguished Indian Civil Servant and Member of
the Indian Council, who had been in turn head of the Government of
Burma, the Central Provinces, and the North-West Provinces, and who had
with conspicuous ability carried on financial and agrarian reforms in
the East. Lord Lansdowne, during his tenure of the Viceroyalty, formed a
high estimate of his knowledge and ability, and it was on his
recommendation that Mr. Wyndham appointed this official to the post. The
correspondence between the two, which Mr. Redmond elicited from the
Government two and a half years later, shows that it was with some
reluctance that the Under Secretary yielded to the pressure brought to
bear on him to accept the office.
"I am an Irishman, a Roman Catholic, and a Liberal in politics," he
wrote. "I have strong Irish sympathies. I do not see eye to eye with you
in all matters of Irish administration, and I think that there is no
likelihood of good coming from such a _régime_ of coercion as the
_Times_ has recently outlined." For all that, being anxious to do some
service to Ireland, he declared his willingness to take office provided
there was some chance of his succeeding, which he thought there would
be, "on this condition, that I should have adequate opportunities of
influencing the policy and acts of the Irish administration, and
subject, of course, to your control, freedom of action in Executive
matters. For many years in India I directed administration on the
largest scale, and I know that if you send me to Ireland the opportunity
of mere secretarial criticism would fall short of the requirements of my
position. If I were installed in office in Ireland my aims, broadly
stated, would be:--(1) The maintenance of order; (2) the solution of the
land question on the basis of voluntary sale; (3) where sale does not
operate the fixation of rent on some self-acting principle whereby local
inquiries would be obviated; (4) the co-ordination, control, and
direction of boards and other administrative bodies; (5) the settlement
of the education question in the general spirit of Mr. Balfour's views,
and generally the promotion of general administrative improvement and
conciliation."
Mr. Wyndham's acceptance of these terms was explicit, and it was
understood, as the Chief Secretary put it in the House of Commons when
the whole subject came up for review, that Sir Antony was appointed
rather as a colleague than as a mere Under Secretary to register Mr.
Wyndham's will, and although in the House of Commons Mr. Balfour said
that Sir Antony was bound by the rules applying to all Civil Servants,
in the House of Lords Lord Lansdowne declared that, "it had been
recognised that the Under Secretary would have greater freedom of
action, greater opportunities of initiative, than if he had been a
candidate in the ordinary way."
One of the first results of the new departure was the withdrawal of the
application of the Coercion Act, which had been in force since April,
1902, an action which roused angry protests from the Orangemen, as did
also the words used, in what was almost his first speech, by Lord
Dudley, the new Viceroy, who had succeeded Lord Cadogan, and who
announced that, "the opinion of the Government was, and it was his own
opinion, that the only way to govern Ireland properly was to govern it
according to Irish ideas instead of according to British ideas."
During 1903 interest was largely engrossed in the fate of the Land Act,
and it was not till the autumn of 1904 that it became known that before
drafting in its final form the programme of the Irish Reform Association
Lord Dunraven had secured the assistance of the Under Secretary with the
knowledge of the Chief Secretary and the Viceroy, the latter of whom,
according to Lord Lansdowne's declaration in the House of Lords, "did
not think that Sir Antony was exceeding his functions"--a fact to which
colour was given by the circumstance that on several occasions the Under
Secretary discussed the reforms with the Lord Lieutenant.
Mr. Wyndham, on behalf of the Government, had taken the unusual course
of repudiating the Dunraven scheme in a letter to the _Times_, but in
spite of this, Irish Unionists wrote to the _Times_ to express their
suspicions "whether in short the devolution scheme is not the price
secretly arranged to be paid for the Nationalist acquiescence in a
settlement of the land question on generous terms."
Then it was that the _Times_ expressed its opinion that when a Unionist
Lord Lieutenant and a Unionist Under Secretary are discussing reforms
which the Cabinet condemn as Home Rule in a thin disguise, it is
obviously time that they quitted their posts. Three weeks later Mr.
Wyndham resigned, but Sir Antony, who had had the refusal of the
Governorship of Bombay--the third greatest Governorship in the British
Empire--retained his position, though his presence at Dublin Castle had
been described by some fervent Orangemen as a menace to the loyal and
law-abiding inhabitants of Ireland, and by the Irish Attorney-General as
a gross betrayal of the Unionist position and an injury to the Unionist
cause. Mr. Long, however, very rapidly won the hearts of those who had
succeeded in securing the resignation of Mr. Wyndham by his description
of devolution as "a cowardly surrender to the forces of disorder," and
in the same strain the Earl of Westmeath spoke of "truckling to
disloyalty and trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated."
At the opening of the session of 1905 the whole question was ventilated.
The official explanations proving unsatisfactory, the Orangemen decided
to withdraw their support from the Government on all questions affecting
Ireland, and the leader of the party went so far as to utter the threat
that "Ulster might have to draw upon her reserves," which was taken to
mean that the Orangemen who were members of the Government would resign
_en masse_--an action which, in the moribund condition of the Ministry,
would have meant an instant dissolution. At the very beginning of the
session Mr. Wyndham had announced that the matter of Sir Antony's
dealings with Lord Dunraven had been considered by the Cabinet, and "the
Government expressed through me their view that the action of Sir Antony
MacDonnell was indefensible. But they authorised me to add that they
were thoroughly satisfied that his conduct was not open to the
imputation of disloyalty."
The equivocal and ambiguous position in which the Unionists placed
themselves in the course of this episode is a striking commentary on the
impossibility of governing a country against its will. The Tories tried
once again, in the historic phrase, to catch the Whigs bathing and steal
their clothes, but this time they failed. When the Orangemen held a
pistol at the Government's head and bade its members stand and deliver,
Mr. Wyndham had perforce to resign, but the mystery, which has not yet
been cleared up, is the reason why the Viceroy and the Under Secretary,
who were tarred with the same brush, retained their posts.
It should in frankness be stated, however, that when during the session
of 1907 the Prime Minister remarked on a certain occasion that he always
thought Mr. Wyndham resigned the Chief Secretaryship in consequence of
criticisms from the Orangemen below the gangway on his own side, Mr.
Balfour interrupted with the remark--"That is a complete mis-statement,
and I think the right honourable gentleman must know it."
One may well ask, in view of this, what was meant by Mr. Wyndham when,
speaking on the reasons for his retirement, on May 9th, 1905, he
accounted for it by the fact that "the situation in Ireland was
complicated by personal misunderstandings," producing "an atmosphere of
suspicion," which was an obvious reference, as most people supposed, to
such denunciations as that of Mr. William Moore of the Chief Secretary's
"wretched, rotten, sickening policy of conciliation." The
disingenuousness marking the whole proceeding is well shown by the fact
that although on announcing Mr. Wyndham's resignation Mr. Balfour
said:--"The ground of his resignation is not ill-health,"[23] less than
a year later, when asked during the election at Manchester by a heckler
to state the reason why Mr. Wyndham retired, the reply of Mr. Balfour
was--"He retired chiefly on account of health."[24]
From the correspondence which passed in March, 1906, between Lord Dudley
and Sir Edward Carson, and which was published in the Press, we have the
express statement from the ex-Lord Lieutenant that Mr. Balfour "never
conveyed to me any intimation that he or the Government disapproved
strongly or otherwise of my conduct."
The correspondence arose over a remark made by Sir Edward Carson, to the
effect that Lord Dudley had made statements both ways as to the
desirability of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas. Challenged
to make good the assertion, which he declared was based on a private
conversation, Sir Edward Carson went on to assert that the Viceroy had
on another occasion expressed the opinion to him that Ireland should be
governed through the agency of the Catholic priesthood. This Lord Dudley
denied as vehemently as he did the imputation of facing both ways, and
in reply went on to write:--
"That you should have formed an impression of that kind from any
conversation with me confirms my belief that the violence of your
opinions on Irish political questions make it quite impossible for you
to estimate justly the standpoint of anyone whose views on such
questions may be more moderate and tolerant than your own. It is not,
however, by violence and intolerance that the cause of union is best
served, and my experience in Ireland has shown me very clearly that the
present system of government constantly receives from its most clamorous
advocates blows as heavy and as effective as any that could be dealt to
it by its avowed enemies."
The Government tried to ride two horses abreast--to rule Ireland
otherwise than by force, and to maintain itself in power with the help
of Orange votes--two courses, each irreconcilable with the other. Their
position reminds me of Alphonse Daudet's immortal creation, Tartarin de
Tarascon, with a double nature, partly that of Don Quixote and partly of
Sancho Panza, at one moment urged on by the glory, and at the next held
back by the prospect of the hardships, of lion-hunting in
Africa--"Couvre toi de gloire," dit Tartarin Quichotte, "Couvre toi de
flanelle dit Tartarin Sancho."
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
government which does not recognise democratic principles to make any
headway in the work of amelioration in Ireland. The moral is that those
responsible for the administration of the country have found themselves
by the force of circumstances, even against their will, driven to apply
popular principles of government in order that they may secure fairness
and efficiency, and my contention that this is so is borne out by the
two incidents to which I have referred, in which the Conservatives
escaped only by the skin of their teeth from committing themselves to a
policy which would have won them the hostility of their Orange allies.
The latter have in truth secured their own way to a remarkable extent.
The promise has not been fulfilled which Mr. Chamberlain made after the
Unionist victory of 1886, to the effect that Lord Salisbury and the
Conservative leaders were prepared to consider and review the
"irritating centralising system of administration which is known as
Dublin Castle." At the time of the ill-fated Round Table Conference,
which Sir William Harcourt convened, Mr. Chamberlain committed himself
to the expediency of establishing some form of legislative authority in
Dublin, and admitted that such a body should be allowed to organise the
form of Executive Government on whatever lines it thought fit, and Sir
West Ridgeway, as Under Secretary, subsequently carried out the behests
of the same Government by outlining a scheme of self-government by means
of Provincial Councils with a partly elected board to control finance.
All these facts serve to show the injustice--in view of acknowledged
facts--of the description by the late Attorney-General for Ireland of
the Wyndham proposals as "mean and cruel desertion."
There is no part of the Irish question in respect of which more has been
said which is misleading than what is known as the problem of Ulster. I
have already explained what a misnomer this is. In the Counties of
Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan there are more
Catholics than Protestants, while in the Counties of Armagh and Down the
numbers of the two creeds are almost equally divided. What is known as
the question of Ulster should in truth be known as that of Belfast, for
it is only in that city and in the adjacent Counties of Antrim and Down
that the religious question is most acute.
The social conditions of the country, which have always been to some
extent, though not to that existing in recent years, agricultural, lead
one to seek a cause in the conditions of Land Tenure for the different
degrees of prosperity pervading the North-East corner of Ulster and the
rest of Ireland. It is impossible to doubt that the Ulster Custom of
Tenant Right had an immense effect on the economic status of the
province. Under it the system of tenure which held the field in the
other three provinces was replaced by one in which the tenants had
security against arbitrary eviction so long as they paid their rents,
and, in addition, were entitled to sell their interest in the property
to the incoming tenant, and this Tenant Right sold often for as much as
half, and sometimes for as much as the full, fee-simple of the holding.
The sum could be obtained on the tenant voluntarily vacating the holding
or on his being unable to pay the rent, the landlord being entitled to
be consulted with a view to approval by him of the incoming tenant.
The importance of the custom can be recognised in the light of the fact
that in England, where improvements are effected in nearly every case
not by the tenant but by the landlord, it has been found necessary,
nevertheless, to give legislative sanction to Tenant Right.
This has been effected by the Agricultural Holdings Acts, 1875, 1883,
and 1900, under which tenants are entitled to statutory compensation for
improvements, whether permanent, as, for example, buildings; for
drainage purposes; or, as in the case of manure, for the improvement of
the soil.
The result of the Ulster Custom on the industry of the Northern
tenant-farmer, who enjoyed a freedom of sale and a fixity of tenure,
and, further, a compensation for improvements long before the tenants of
the South and West secured these advantages, are impossible to
over-estimate. Again, in considering the relative economic positions of
the members of the two religions, it is impossible to blink the fact
that little more than a century has passed since the Irish Catholics
were treated as helots under a penal code, and that, if they have been
behind hand in the industrial race, account must be taken of the lead in
the saddle to which in that way they were subjected. The resulting
preponderance of Protestants among the landed gentry led to a further
factor in the ostracism which in the past they exercised as employers of
labour, whether agricultural or industrial, which, besides its direct
effect of breeding and perpetuating sectarian hate, served in an
economic sense to unfit Catholics for employment, and to persuade those
who in fact were least unfitted and retained their perceptive faculties,
that the scope for their energies was to be found only abroad, and so
tended to leave behind a residue of labourers rendered unfit for
employment as against the time when the prejudice of the richer classes
was removed. The non-application in the more purely Protestant parts of
Ulster of the principles which held the field in other parts of Ireland
made for prosperity in that province by tending towards an economic
condition of the labour market, unimpeded by artificial restrictions,
arising from religious differences and imposed at the hands of employers
of labour. Another factor in the contentment of the Ulster Presbyterians
under the varying vicissitudes of Irish government is to be found in the
history of the Regium Donum. The Scottish settlers in 1610 having
brought with them their ministers, the latter were put in possession of
the tithes of the parishes in which they were planted. These they
enjoyed till the death of Charles I., but payments were stopped on their
refusal to recognise the Commonwealth. Henry Cromwell, however, allowed
the body £100, which Charles II. increased to £600, per annum, but
towards the end of his reign, and during that of James II., it was
discontinued. William III. renewed the grant, increasing it to £1,200,
and it was still further augmented in 1785 and 1792. After the Union
Castlereagh largely increased the amount of the Regium Donum, and
completely altered its mode of distribution, making it in fact
contingent on the loyalty of the parson to the Union. The spirit in
which it was granted is well shown in a letter in Castlereagh's memoirs,
in which the writer, addressing the Chief Secretary just after the votes
had been passed by Parliament, declared--"Never before was Ulster under
the dominion of the British Crown. It had a distinct moral existence
before, and now the Presbyterian ministry will be a subordinate
ecclesiastical aristocracy, whose feeling will be that of zealous
loyalty, and whose influence on those people will be as purely sedative
when it should be, and exciting when it should be, as it was the reverse
before." Those who blame Pitt for not having carried through his schemes
of concurrent endowment, and who see in his failure to do so, one reason
for the ill success of his policy of Union, must admit the importance of
the fact that the Presbyterian clergy were pensioners of the State. A
notion of the extent to which they were subsidised may be inferred from
the fact that by the Commutation Clauses of the Church Disestablishment
Act of 1869, the Dissenters secured as compensation for the loss of the
Regium Donum and other payments a sum of £770,000, while the equivalent
amount paid in lieu of the Maynooth grant to the Catholics--numbering at
least eight times as many--amounted to only £372,000.
It was Froude who declared that if the woollen and linen industries had
not been hampered there would now be four Ulsters instead of one. Even
in the days before restrictions were placed on the production of Irish
linen for the better encouragement of the English trade, the North of
Ireland was far ahead of the rest of the country in the matter of
flax-spinning, and this pre-eminence was mainly due to the fact that the
climate there is more suited to that plant than in other parts of
Ireland.
Starting with this advantage, linen was able in that province to survive
the impositions placed on its production, while in places less favoured
by a suitable climate the industry went to the wall. To assume off-hand,
without going into the innumerable causes which effect such movements of
commerce, that innate thrift was responsible, apart from all other
causes, for the progress of Belfast is an attitude similar to that of
one who should hold that nothing but the stupidity of the East Anglian
yokel has prevented that country from becoming as much a centre of
industry as is Lancashire, for such a sweeping generalisation would take
no account of other forces at work in the development of the great
commercial centres of the North as, for example, the fact that the
peculiar conditions of the Lancashire climate are such that the
processes of cotton-spinning can be best effected in an atmosphere
containing the amount of moisture which there prevails.
In Belfast the interdependence of the linen and the ship-building
trades--in one of which the men, while in the other the women, of many
families are employed--is one of the most powerful instruments of social
progress. The narrow sea which separates it from Scotland and the
geographical conformation of Belfast Lough have, moreover, a great
bearing on its prosperity. Independence of Irish railways with their
excessive freights, crippling by their incidence all export trade, in a
town like Belfast, nine-tenths of the industrial output of which goes
across the sea, and the advantage which it has over all other Irish
towns in its proximity, again independently of Irish railways, to the
Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, and Cumberland coalfields, are very important
considerations in view of the obstacle which the scarcity of coal is to
all commercial enterprises in the island.
Finally, it must not be forgotten, in reference to the greatest of the
industries of the North of Ireland, that a very exceptional impetus was
given to the development of the commercial enterprise of Belfast at a
time which might otherwise have proved a critical period in her
industrial career, by the fact that the American Civil War caused a
slump in cotton which resulted in the failure of a very large number of
Lancashire cotton mills, the place of which was taken by the linen mills
of Belfast, which have profited ever since from the advantage gained in
that crisis and the growth of their trade which it effected.
I have said enough, I think, to show that the attempt to foist the blame
for the backwardness--in an industrial sense--of the rest of the country
as compared with the North-East corner, on the difference of religion,
is to close one's eyes to half a dozen other factors which must in truth
also be appreciated in order that one may arrive at a proper estimate of
the real reason for the disparity which undoubtedly exists. The facts
which I have mentioned serve to show the unwarrantable nature of the
assumption which accounts for the prosperity of North-East Ulster by
considerations of race and religion alone. That several generations of
progress in the industrial field have had a great effect on the
character of the people of Belfast in respect of thrift, energy, and
industry I am not concerned to deny, but on what ground in this light is
to be explained the decrease in population of Antrim and Down which has
gone on concurrently with the enormous increase in that of Belfast? That
extrinsic factors such as those of geographical situation have much to
do with increase of prosperity is well illustrated by the industrial
growth of Wexford, with its manufactories of agricultural implements and
dairy machinery, which is largely attributable to the close proximity of
that town to the coalfields and iron of South Wales.
As to the argument that political preoccupation is responsible for
national backwardness, in the case of Finland the convulsions of a
bitter political agitation have not been found incompatible with an
increase of wealth and of population.
In this connection it is germane to ask what the Protestant people of
Ulster have done for the rest of the country, and to inquire if, with
all their commercial success, they have been in the van of progress.
That they have never produced a great leader of men or framer of policy
is a remarkable fact, and to every demand of their fellow-countrymen
they have answered with a reiterated _non possumus_, backed by threats
of their intentions in case they are ignored, which, in point of fact,
they have never carried into effect.
The Orangemen in turn opposed Emancipation, Tithe Reform, Land Reform,
Church Disestablishment, the Ballot, Local Government, and the
settlement of the University question. Their attitude to the Land
Conference we have seen elsewhere, and in view of this record one may
ask whether or not they deserve Mr. Morley's condemnation as "an
irreconcilable junto, always unteachable, always wrong."
That their loyalty is contingent on the maintenance of their ascendancy
and the enforcement of their views, their reception of the Church Act of
1869 well shows, as does also the manner in which in 1886 they
threatened armed resistance if the Bill to which they were opposed was
carried. That they submitted to the Church Act without carrying out
their threats is a matter of history, and there is at least a strong
probability that in the latter event a similar effect would have been
witnessed.
The removal of religious tests in the public life of Great Britain has
been accomplished so completely that it is difficult for Englishmen to
realise the extent to which the spirit, if not the letter, of tests at
this day persists in Ireland.
We have recently seen the adjournment of the House of Commons moved by
the Orangemen because a rate collector in Ballinasloe did not receive
the appointment to a post for which he applied, and the demands of
Catholics for a due share of position and of influence is denounced as a
claim for monopoly.
To show how much evidence there is to sustain the charge I will quote a
Protestant writer on this question of preferment--"Three-quarters of the
Irish people," she writes, "are Catholics. Of 23 Lords Lieutenant since
1832 not one has been a Catholic, nor ever by law can be a Catholic, and
only 3 have been Irishmen, tame Irish, as the word goes in Ireland of
the denationalised Irishman who has shaken off allegiance to his own
people. Of 30 Chief Secretaries, almost all English, not one has been a
Catholic. It is not necessary that the Chief Secretary or the Commander
of the Forces should be Protestant, but no Catholic has ever yet been
allowed to fill either of these exalted offices. Of the 173 Irish peers
only 14 (including Viscount Taafe of Austria) are Catholics, and the 28
representative peers in the House of Lords are all free from the taint
of the religion of the Irish people, and powerful to drive opinion
against it. Out of 60 Privy Councillors in Ireland 4 only are Catholics,
and 3 out of 17 judges. Eleven out of the 60 Sub-Commissioners are
Catholics; 7 out of the 21 County Court Judges. The head of the police
is a Protestant. One only of the 36 County Inspectors is a Catholic. Of
170 District Inspectors only 10 are of that faith, and of 65 Resident
Magistrates only 15 are Catholics. If we take the Valuation Offices, the
Registration Offices, the Inspectorship of Factories, the Board of
Works, the Woods and Forests, the Ordnance Survey, and any and every
public department, Protestants hold three places out of four, though
they are but one-quarter of the whole population. The extreme party, as
we have seen, have secured no less than seven offices in the Government,
and their followers and friends hold about 90 per cent. of the higher
salaried posts under the Crown in Ireland."[25]
The same writer attributes the glaring discrepancy between the figures
which have just been quoted and the ratio of Catholics and Protestants
in the population of Ireland to "a union of Protestant fanaticism and
place-hunting greed." That it is due to any lack of ability among Irish
Catholics I scarcely think anyone will urge, and in this connection an
amazing article, which I remember reading in an English paper, is of
interest. The writer, a Unionist from Ulster, strove to show the manner
in which the influence of the Vatican was making itself felt in English
politics by pointing to the number of Catholics--mostly Irishmen--who
held high posts in the British Diplomatic, Civil, Military, and Naval
Services, the presence of whom, which he tried to indicate as a menace,
but which most Englishmen view with equanimity, shows by contrast the
extent to which a taboo is placed in Ireland on officials who adhere to
the creed of the majority of their countrymen.
Enough has been said as to the preference shown to one caste, religious
and political, to explain the reason for the fact that in Ireland the
_soi-disant_ loyalist has become synonymous with place-hunter. If
Unionism in Ireland pervades the richer classes, it does so also in
Great Britain, but in Ireland the inherent weakness of an established
Church, by which its prestige and the cachet which it gives, make it a
harbour of refuge for those who wish for advancement, and who think that
if they creep and intrude and climb into the fold they will secure it,
all these are factors, which are present in Dublin, where the
Establishment is Unionism with Dublin Castle as its cathedral. Social
ambition, anxiety for preferment or for an _entree_ into society, are
all at work to bring it to pass that a large amount of wealth and
influence are ranged on the side of the Union. It is a damaging
indictment which has been drawn up against the Irish landlords by Mr.
T.W. Russell in his recent book, where he declares of this class, with
which he fought side by side against the two Home Rule Bills, that he
has come to the conclusion, slowly but surely, "that in pretending to
fight for the Union these men were simply fighting for their own
interests, that Rent and not Patriotism was their guiding motive,"[26]
and the same charge was formulated a few years ago by Lord Rossmore, a
former Grand Master of the Orange Society, when he made a public
declaration that the so-called Loyalist minority in Ireland were blindly
following the lead of a few professional politicians, who felt that
their salaries and positions depended on the divisions and antipathies
of those who should be working together for the good of their common
country.
There is no aspect of the Irish question in regard to which more dust is
thrown in Englishmen's eyes than that which is summed up in the one word
disloyalty. The prestige of the Crown in Great Britain, where its
functions are atrophied to a greater extent than in any other country in
Europe, is one of the most striking features in contemporary English
life. The loyalty of a nation is chiefly due to associations formed by
events in its history. The extreme unpopularity of Queen Victoria in
Great Britain in the earlier years of her reign, which arose from her
retirement as far as possible from public life on the death of the
Prince Consort, completely disappeared with the passage of years, when
her age, her sex, and her private virtues overcame the antipathy which a
very natural reticence on the part of a grief-stricken widow had
aroused throughout Great Britain. The associations connected with the
Crown in Ireland are not many. From the day on which Dutch William beat
English James at the Boyne in circumstances not calculated to arouse the
enthusiasm of Irish Catholics for either the lawful king or the usurper,
no Sovereign set foot in Ireland till George IV. visited the country in
1824. The main function of Ireland as regards the monarchs of that time
was that its pension list served to provide for the maintenance of Royal
favourites as to whose income they wished no questions to be asked.
Curran thundered against the Irish pension list as "containing every
variety of person, from the excellence of a Hawke or a Rodney to the
base situation of a lady who humbleth herself that she may be exalted."
In saying this he was understating rather than overstating the case,
since a very cursory inspection of the State papers will reveal the fact
that the mistresses and bastards of every English King, from Charles II.
to George II., drew their incomes from the Irish establishment free from
the inquisitive prying of the English House of Commons. Although George
III. had no need to conceal any palace scandals in this way, we have
seen how the bigotry of "an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king"
postponed Emancipation for more than a generation, and one of the
"princes, the dregs of their dull race," of whom Shelley went on to
speak, the Duke of York, declared in the House of Lords in 1825--"I will
oppose the Catholic claims whatever may be my situation in life. So help
me God."
The respectful reception accorded to Queen Victoria--whose dislike of
Ireland was notorious--on the very rare occasions on which she visited
the country serves to show the absence of hostility to the Crown on the
part of the great mass of the people, but the small number of these
visits during the course of the longest reign in English history lends
point to a question asked by Mr. James Bryce in a book published more
than twenty years ago--Why has the most obvious service a monarch can
render been so strangely neglected? When the present King visited the
South of Ireland as Prince of Wales in 1885, at a time when Mr. Charles
Parnell's prestige was at its zenith, he was greeted with the half
humorous sally--"We will have no Prince but Charley," which at any rate
contrasts favourably with the shouts of "Popish Ned," which his alleged
sympathy with the popular side evoked on his visit a few years later to
Londonderry.
The trivial fact that the English National Anthem was drowned at the
degree day of the Royal University a few years ago by the fact that the
students insisted on singing "God Save Ireland" at the end of a ceremony
which even in the decorous surroundings of the Sheldonian and the Senate
House is marked by a large amount of disrespectful licence, nevertheless
provided the _Times_ and the Unionist Press in general, for several days
with a text upon which they hung their leading articles in the
exploitation of their favourite theme, but no attention has been drawn
in these quarters to the periodical threat of Orange exponents of a
contingent loyalty to "throw the Crown into the Boyne" as a protest
against the various assaults which have been made upon their prerogative
by Parliament, and no mention was made in the English Press of the fact
that on the day of the postponement of the coronation, owing to the
illness of the King, the organ of the "disloyalists"--the _Freeman's
Journal_--ended its leading article with the words "God Save the King,"
which were a mere expression of the feelings of the bulk of its readers.
Loyalty, said Swift, is the foible of the Irish people, and it is a
remarkable fact, in spite of the detestable insult to their religious
views which the law exacts from the Sovereign at his accession, that the
popular welcome accorded to his Majesty, on the part of individuals,
should remove any ground for the suggestion that the Crown, which
Grattan always declared was an Imperial Crown, is viewed with any animus
in Ireland.
That public bodies as such refuse to offer addresses of welcome is due
to a conviction that to do so would be interpreted as an abdication of
the popular position, an acquiescence in the _status quo_, a recognition
of the system of government of which the Sovereign is head; and it must
not be forgotten in this connection that, if the Sovereign is neutral,
his representative in Ireland is a strong party man, and that the
tendency which his Majesty has so strongly deprecated in England on more
than one occasion, of employing emblems of royalty as symbols of party,
has been ineradicably established by the ascendancy faction in Ireland,
where the Union Jack is a party badge and God Save the King has been
monopolised as a party song.