FORCES OF REGENERATION AND THEIR EFFECT
"George A. Birmingham" (who in private life is Canon Hannay), in his
admirable book, _An Irishman Looks at his World_, tells us: "The
most important educational work in Ireland during the last twenty
years has been done independently of universities or schools," and in
this statement I entirely agree with him. And I may add that in this
work Canon Hannay himself bore no inconsiderable part. During a
political campaign in Mayo in 1910 I had some delightful conversations
with Canon Hannay in my hotel at Westport, and his views expressed in
the volume from which I quote are only a development of those which he
then outlined. Both as to the vexed questions then disturbing North
and South Ireland and as to the lines along which national growth
ought to take place we had much in common. We agreed that nationality
means much more than mere political independence--that it is founded
on the character and intellect of the people, that it lives and is
expressed in its culture, customs and traditions, in its literature,
its songs and its arts. We saw hope for Ireland because she was
remaking and remoulding herself from within--the only sure way in
which she could work out her eventual salvation, whatever political
parties or combinations may come or go.
This process of regeneration took firm root when the parties were
exhausting themselves in mournful internal strife. Through the whole
of the nineteenth century it had been the malign purpose of England to
destroy the spirit of nationality through its control of the schools.
Just as in the previous century it sought to reduce Ireland to a state
of servitude through the operations of the Penal Laws, so it now
sought to continue its malefic purpose by a system of education "so
bad that if England had wished to kill Ireland's soul when she imposed
it on the Sister Isle she could not have discovered a better means of
doing so" (M. Paul Dubois). And the same authority ascribes the
fatalism, the lethargy, the moral inertia and intellectual passivity,
the general absence of energy and character which prevailed in Ireland
ten or twelve years ago to the fact that England struck at Ireland
through her brain and sought to demoralise and ruin the national mind.
Thank God for it that the effort failed, but it failed mainly owing to
the fact that a new generation of prophets had arisen in Ireland who
saw that in the revival and reform of national education rested the
best hope for the future. They recalled the gospel of Thomas Davis and
the other noble minds of the Young Ireland era that we needs must
educate in order that we may be free. They sought to give form and
effect to the splendid ideals of the Young Irelanders. A new spirit
was abroad, and not in matters educational alone. The doctrine of
self-help and self-reliance was being preached and, what was better,
practised.
The Gaelic League, founded in 1893 by a few enthusiastic Irish
spirits, was formed to effect an Irish renascence in matters of the
mind and spirit. It was non-sectarian and non-political. Its purpose
was purely psychological and educational--it sought the preservation
of the Irish language from a fast-threatening decay, it encouraged the
study of ancient Irish literature and it promoted the cultivation of a
modern literature in the Irish language. Its beginnings were modest,
and its founders were practically three unknown young men whose only
special equipment for leadership of a new movement were boundless
enthusiasm and the possession of the scholastic temperament. Douglas
Hyde, the son of a Protestant clergyman, dwelt far away in an
unimportant parish in Connaught, and, while still a boy, became
devoted to the study of the Irish language. Father O'Growney was a
product of Maynooth culture, whose love of the Irish tongue became the
best part of his nature, and John MacNeill (now so well known as a
Sinn Fein leader) was born in Antrim, educated in a Belfast school and
acquired his love for Irish in the Aran islands. It is marvellous to
consider how the programme of the new League "caught on." Some
movements make their appeal to a class or a cult--to the young, the
middle-aged or the old. But the Gaelic League, perhaps because of the
very simplicity and directness of its objects, made an appeal to all.
It numbered its adherents in every walk of life; it drew its
membership from all political parties; it gathered the sects within
its folds, and the greatest tribute that can be paid it is that it
taught all its disciples a new way of looking at Ireland and gave them
a new pride in their country. Ireland became national and independent
in a sense it had not learnt before--it realised that "the essential
mark of nationhood is the intellectual, social and moral patrimony
which the past bequeaths to the present, which, amplified, or at least
preserved, the present must bequeath to the future, and that it is
this which makes the strength and individuality of a people."
Its branches spread rapidly throughout Ireland, and the movement was
taken up abroad with equal enthusiasm. Irish language classes were
organised, Irish history of the native--as distinct from the
British--brand was taught. Lessons in dancing and singing were given
and the old national airs were revived and became the popular music of
the day. It would take too much of my space to recount all the varied
activities of the League, all that it did to preserve ancient Irish
culture, to make the past live again in the lives of the people, to
foster national sports and recreations, to organise Gaelic festivals
of the kind that flourished in Ireland's artistic past, to create an
Irish Ireland and to arrest the decadence of manners and the
Anglicisation which had almost eaten into the souls of the people and
destroyed their true Celtic character. Mr P.H. Pearse truly said of
it: "The Gaelic League will be recognised in history as the most
revolutionary influence that ever came into Ireland." It saved the
soul of Ireland when it was in imminent danger of being lost, and its
triumph was in great measure due to the fact that it held rigidly
aloof from the professedly political parties, although it may be said
for it that it undoubtedly laid the foundations of that school of
thought which made all the later developments of nationality possible.
And the amazing thing is that the priest and the parson, the gentry
and the middle classes, equally with the peasantry, vied with each
other in extending the influence and power of the movement. One of its
strongest supporters was a leader of the Belfast Orangemen, the late
Dr Kane, who observed that though he was a Unionist and a Protestant
he did not forget that he had sprung from the Clan O'Cahan. The
stimulation given to national thought and purpose spread in many
directions. A new race of Irish priests was being educated on more
thoroughly Irish lines, and they went forth to their duties with the
inspiration, as it were, of a new call. A crusade was started against
emigration, which was fast draining the country of its reserves of
brain, brawn and beauty. The dullness of the country-side, an
important factor in forcing the young and adventurous abroad, was
relieved by the new enthusiasm for Irish games and pastimes and
recreations--for the _seanchus_, the _sgoruidheacht_, the
_ceilidhe_ and the _Feiseanna_.
In giving to the young especially a new pride in their country and in
their own, great and distinctive national heritage, it did a great
deal to strengthen the national character and to make it more
independent and self-reliant. It started the great work of rooting out
the slavery which centuries of dependency and subjection had bred into
the marrow of the race. Mr Arthur Griffith has admitted that the
present generation could never have effected this work had not Parnell
and his generation done their brave labour before them, but considered
in themselves the achievements of the Gaelic League can only be
described as mighty both in the actual revolution it wrought in the
moral, intellectual and spiritual sphere, in the reaction it created
against the coarser materialism of imported modes and manners, and in
the new spirit which it breathed into the entire people.
Coincident with the foundation of the Gaelic League, other
regenerative influences were also at work. These aimed at the economic
reconstruction and the industrial development of the country by the
inculcation of the principles of self-help, self-reliance and
co-operation, and by the wider dissemination of technical instruction
and agricultural education. Ireland, by reason, I suppose, of its
condition, its arrested development and its psychology, is a country
much given to "new movements," most of which have a very brief
existence. They are born but to breathe and then expire. In the ease,
however, of the Gaelic League, and the movements for co-operation
amongst the farmers, and for technical instruction in the arts and
crafts most suitable to the country, these movements were conceived
and created strongly to endure. And to the credit of their authors
and, be it said also, of the country for whose upliftment and
betterment they were intended, they have endured greatly, and greatly
fulfilled their purpose.
It is conceded by all who have any knowledge of the subject that the
economic decadence of Ireland is not due to any lack of natural
resources; neither is it due to insufficiency of capital or absence of
workers. It is due to want of initiative, want of enterprise, want of
business method, want of confidence, and want of education on the
right lines. The education which should have been fashioned to fit the
youth of Ireland for a life of work and industry and usefulness in
their own land was invented with the express object of making of them
"happy English children." There are possibly a few hundred millions
sterling of Irish money, belonging in the main to the farmers and
well-to-do shopkeepers, lying idle in Irish banks, and the irony of it
is that these savings of the Irish are invested in British
enterprises. They help to enrich the British plutocrat and to provide
employment for the British worker, whilst the vast natural resources
of Ireland remain undeveloped and the cream of Ireland's productive
power, in the shape of its workers, betake themselves to other lands
to assist in strengthening the structure and stability of other
nations, when they should be engaged in raising the fabric of a
prosperous commonwealth at home.
Those, however, who would blame Ireland for its present position of
industrial stagnation forget that it was not always thus--they do not
bear it in mind that Ireland had a great commercial past, that it had
its own mercantile marine doing direct trade with foreign countries,
that it had flourishing industries and factories and mills all over
the country, but that all these were killed and destroyed and driven
out of existence by the cruel trade policy of England, which decreed
the death of every Irish industry or manufacture which stood in the
way of its own industrial progress.
Those who sought the economic reconstruction of the country had
accordingly to contend against a very evil inheritance. The commercial
spirit had been destroyed; it should be educated anew. The desire to
foster home products and manufactures had ceased to exist; it should
be re-born and a patriotic preference for home manufactures instilled
into the people. Pride in one's labour--the very essence of
efficiency--had gone out of the country. It should be aroused again.
Economic reform should proceed first on educational lines before it
could be hoped to establish new industries with any hope of success.
The pioneer in this work was the Hon. (now Sir) Horace Plunkett who
returned to Ireland after some ranching experiences in the United
States and set himself the task of effecting the economic regeneration
of rural Ireland by preaching the gospel of self-help and
co-operation. It is no part of my purpose to inquire into the secret
motives of Sir Horace Plunkett, if he ever had any, or to allege, as a
certain writer (M. Paul Dubois) has done, that Sir Horace promoted the
movement for economic reform in the hope of reconciling Ireland to the
Union and to Imperialism. I may lament it, as I do, that Sir Horace,
who now believes himself to be the discoverer of Dominion Home Rule,
did not raise his voice either for the Agrarian Settlement or for Home
Rule during all the years while he was a real power in the country. I
am not however going to allow my views on these questions to deflect
my judgment from the real merit of the work performed by Sir Horace
and his associates in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society,
which in the teeth of considerable difficulties and obstacles
succeeded in propagating through Ireland the principles of self-help
and co-operation.
From the first, the Society had many and powerful enemies, most of the
opposition springing from interested and malevolent parties. But there
is, perhaps, no man in all the world so quick to see what is really
for his advantage as the Irish farmer, and so the movement gradually
found favour, and co-operative associations began to be formed in all
parts of Ireland. The agricultural labourer has all along regarded the
Creamery side of co-operation with absolute dislike. He declares that
it is fast denuding the land of labour, that it tends to decrease
tillage, and is one of the most active causes of emigration. They say,
and there is ocular evidence of the fact, that a donkey and a little
boy or girl to drive him to the Creamery now do the work of dairymaids
and farm hands. But, whilst this is a criticism justified by existing
conditions, it does not mean that co-operation is a thing bad in
itself, or that there is anything inherently vicious in it to cause or
create the employment of less labour. What it does mean is that the
education of the farmer is still far from complete, that he does not
yet know how to make the best use of his land, and that he does not
till and cultivate it as he ought to make it really fruitful. Besides
the Creamery system there are other forms of co-operation which have
exercised a most beneficent influence amongst the peasantry. These
include agricultural societies for the improvement of the breed of
cattle, a number of country banks, mostly of the Raiffeisen type,
co-operative associations of rural industries, principally lace, and
societies for the sale of eggs and fowls, the dressing of flax, and
general agriculture.
A direct outcome of the Co-operative Movement was the creation by Act
of Parliament in 1899 of the Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction in Ireland--a Department which, though it possesses many
faults of administration and of policy, has nevertheless had a
distinctly wholesome influence on Irish life. In relation to the
Co-operative Movement the judgment of Mr Dillon was once again
signally at fault. He gave it vehement opposition at every point and
threw the whole weight of his personal following into the effort to
arrest its growth and expansion. Happily, however, the practical good
sense of the people saved them from becoming the dupes of parties who
had axes of their own, political or personal, to grind, and thus
co-operation and self-help have won, in spite of all obstacles and
objections, a very fair measure of success.
Meanwhile a remarkable development was taking place in the matter of
bringing popular and educative literature within reach of the masses.
Public and parish libraries and village halls were widely established.
These were supplementary to the greater movements to which reference
has been made, but they were indicative of the steady bent of the
national mind towards enlightenment and education, and of a desire in
all things appertaining to the national life for more and better
instruction. Another important movement there was to which little
reference is made in publications dealing with the period--namely, the
organisation of the town and country labourers for their political and
social improvement. It was first known as the Irish Democratic Trade
and Labour Federation, but this went to pieces in the general
confusion of the Split. It was resurrected subsequently under the
title of the Irish Land and Labour Association. I mention it here as
an additional instance of the regenerative agencies that were at work
in every domain of Irish life, and among all classes, at a time when
the politicians were tearing themselves to pieces and providing a
Roman holiday for their Saxon friends.