unhappily extinct, of the old "classical academies" kept in the country
parts of Munster by private laymen. In the eighteenth century, and on
into the nineteenth, these men kept alive the tradition of Irish popular
poetry, sometimes with a real gift. For good or for bad they were
persons of character and of talent, and the last of them is alive,
though he keeps school no longer. He taught boys who had learnt the
rudiments at the ordinary national school, and who wished to carry on
their studies with a view either to the priesthood or to medicine. He
was paid only by the fees of his scholars, who were either the sons of
farmers about him, or of men living at a distance, who sent their
children to be part of the family in some farm where they had kinship or
acquaintance. Thus existence for these scholars was divided between the
home life of a farm and the hours of school. There was, however, a small
element of what in Ireland were called "poor scholars"--boys from the
less prosperous North and West, who came (sometimes walking the whole
journey) to get learning gratis. To them teaching was never refused, and
their board was provided by the farmers, who "would be snatching them
from one and other," since they assisted the other children in preparing
tasks.
Now, in the school which my friend has described to me, there was no
formal teaching of anything but the prescribed subjects. But literature
would be lying about--Haverty's _History of Ireland_, and the
Nationalist papers of the day--and the teacher was there always ready to
expound and answer questions. Himself a fighting politician (a member of
the Fenian organisation, whose name is still sacred throughout Ireland),
he was careful never to draw in or compromise his pupils; but to teach
them the story of their country and discuss it with them was part of his
natural occupation. He taught Irish also, the tongue readiest to him,
for he held that Irishmen should know their own language; but the
essential business of his school was teaching the simple old-fashioned
curriculum, Latin, mathematics, and some Greek. Yet because he was a man
who loved and valued knowledge for its own sake, and loved and valued
literature, it is probable that he gave a more real training to the mind
than is achieved by the most modern system of hand and eye culture and
the rest of it. He taught neither religion nor morals, but his teaching
assumed throughout, what his example showed, that a man should be true
and thorough in what he professed to believe, and should be ready at all
times to make sacrifices for principle. Such a school had the only moral
influence which in Ireland has ever counted for much--the influence of a
strong personality, acting in alliance with the influences of a fully
realised religion and of an ordered family life.
I sketch a more concrete picture that always rises in my mind with a ray
of hope, when I think of education in Ireland. Out of doors, winter
twilight falling on a wild landscape within hearing of the Atlantic
surf; the man of the house coming out to talk to me, a handsome Irishman
of the old school, frieze-clad, with the traditional side whiskers, the
humorous eye and mouth. We talked for a while in the cold, then "_Gabh i
leith isteach_," he said, "for I hear you have the Irish." As I paused
in the door to phrase the Gaelic salutation, more devout and courteous
than would come to my lips in any other tongue, I was astonished at the
company gathered in the long low room. Chairs were set by the wide
hearth of course, and from one of them the woman of the house rose to
greet me; a settle ran along the side wall, and its length was filled
with men and women blotted against the dusk background. But the centre
of the picture was a narrow deal table set in the middle of the room,
with candles on it, and benches on each side, and on the benches fully
ten children busy with books and copies. "Are these your burden?" I
asked in the quaint Irish phrase. "A share of them," the man answered;
and then I understood that some belonged to other neighbours, and that
it was a mutual arrangement for friendliness and help. None of the
children budged; there they were, drilled and disciplined at their work,
in the middle of the room, while their elders sat and chatted quietly. I
have never seen elsewhere anything which so filled my conception of what
a home should be, as that farmhouse in Corcabascinn--so full of order
and good governance, yet so free of constraint, so full of welcome, yet
so lacking in expense or display. For, understand, we who were strangers
were brought (much against my will) into the state-room or parlour
beyond the party wall, and drink was pressed upon us hospitably. But the
neighbours who had come there (and came daily, I fancy) came neither to
eat nor drink (unless maybe tea might be brewing) but simply to sit and
smoke and talk, and watch that their children got their lessons
properly. And at the end, perhaps before they parted, perhaps when the
family was alone, the rosary would be said by the turf fire, that made,
winter or summer, the centre of all that pleasant existence.
It is a pity to think of how poorly the National school, to which those
children would go with their tasks in the morning, seconds the help
which this home life gives it. Easily could the school--which takes
whatever real light it has from the home, just as it depends for warmth
on the few turf which scholars bring daily along with their
books--reflect sound and fruitful ideas on to the home through the
children. It could teach the children and the parents, not only the
political, but the economic history of their own country; it could teach
them what has been done in Ireland, what has succeeded, what has failed,
and why; it could teach them, who are already proud of being Irish, to
have new reasons for their pride; it could teach them, who are already
willing to do their best for Ireland, into what channels the driving
force of that willingness may be poured.
Outside of definite religion, the only fruitful source of educational
ideas connected with the moral order that I see in Ireland is the Gaelic
League. This organisation, founded to save from extinction, and to
revive into new prosperity the national language of Ireland, based
itself entirely upon a moral appeal. It appealed to Irishmen as they
were proud of their race, to save the most distinctive symbol of their
nationality; and the appeal met with an extraordinary promptness of
response. But to stimulate and promote the movement, it was found
necessary to widen the propaganda. Irishmen were urged to learn Irish,
and to speak Irish because of pride in their country; the same
organisation soon began to teach that an Irishman who set an example of
drunkenness, or gave an occasion of it, not only sinned against himself,
but against his country. Vulgar and indecent literature was denounced as
un-Irish; Irish dances were advocated, not only for their admirable
grace and their historic interest, but also because it was held that
dances like the waltz, departed from the austere standard of Irish
morality. Irish men and women were taught to buy goods of Irish
manufacture by the people who taught them to learn the language, on the
ground that if the Irish nation continued to ebb away out of Ireland,
nationality and language must perish together.
Thus through the medium of a propaganda which at first sight would seem
merely literary and archaeological, many practical issues of life were
related to a purely educational purpose. There is no doubt that the
Gaelic League, now a widespread and solidly established organisation,
spending on the whole, perhaps, L30,000 or L40,000 a year on its
enterprise, has done as much to promote temperance, and to further Irish
industries, as it has accomplished in its peculiar task of reviving the
old tongue. Primarily a teaching institution--for each of the League's
eight hundred branches exists to hold classes for Irish study--it has
linked with the linguistic teaching a moral idea. The reaction has been
mutual, for there is more intelligent thought on the methods of
linguistic teaching in the Gaelic League than one would easily find in
all the schools and universities of Ireland. The appeal to pride of race
has quickened intelligence no less than enthusiasm.
It is a very remarkable fact, that the great teaching order of the
Christian Brothers has taken up the teaching of Irish and generally the
Gaelic League's whole propaganda more thoroughly than any other
organisation in Ireland; very remarkable, for their practical success is
so conspicuous that Protestant clergymen have repeatedly from the pulpit
appealed for extra support to Protestant schools whose pupils, as one
preacher said in my hearing, were being ousted in all competition for
employment by the lads from the Christian Brothers' schools. Whatever
the post was, the preacher said, this body of lay Catholics seemed
always to have a candidate specially prepared for it. One of the
greatest institutions in charge of that order is the industrial school
at Artane, near Dublin, where eight hundred boys are being prepared for
different trades. Every single one of those boys is now being taught
Irish; that is to say, a linguistic training with a special appeal to
the learner's patriotism has been superimposed on the ordinary
rudiments. It is a great experiment made by enthusiasts who are also
teachers with an intensely practical bent.
It is too early even to forecast the effect which is likely to be
produced upon Irish education generally by the new university colleges
set up under Mr. Birrell's Act. Yet this may be said. Irish education
needs reform from the top downwards, not from the bottom upwards. It has
lacked idealism, and these universities in which Ireland, whether of the
north or the south, will be free to express its own character, can and
should set up ideals which will govern every school in the country.
Trinity College has been free to follow its own bent, and its eyes
to-day are, in scriptural phrase, "on the ends of the earth." Primary
education, secondary studies, as governed by the machinery controlled
through the Board of Intermediate Education, and university teaching as
directed and rewarded through the Royal University, have all in the last
resort been inspired by Englishmen who thought it very desirable that
Irish boys and girls should learn to read and write and cipher, and that
young men and young women should equip themselves for clerkships in the
civil service, but who never for one instant realised that the end of
education is divergence not conformity--to elicit, whether from the race
or from the individual, a full and characteristic development. In twenty
years perhaps a paper of interest may be written to show the positive
results of education upon Irish character. At present the most
noticeable facts are negative, and may be summed up by affirming a total
lack of correspondence between the system employed and the needs and
qualities of the Irish people.
1907.
THE IRISH GENTRY.
At the height on the struggle over the Home Rule Bill, there was
published a book interesting as the biography of a remarkable
individual, but no less interesting as depicting the crucial moment in
the history of an aristocracy. Colonel Moore wisely entitles the life of
his father simply _An Irish Gentleman_. Versatile, eloquent,
quick-tempered and lovable, excessive in generosity, excessive in
courage and self-confidence, with the racecourse for his ruling passion
and horsemanship for his supreme achievement, George Henry Moore was the
paragon of his class. He displayed in the highest degree those qualities
on which the Irish gentry prided themselves and which they most admired:
he shared the prestige and power of Irish landlords when prestige and
power were at their height; and he confronted the decisive hour when he,
and men like him, had to choose between the interest of their country
and the interest of their class. There he separated himself from his
fellows; he parted from all to whom he was bound by ties of immediate
advantage, of pleasure, of association, of affection, and he threw in
his lot with Ireland. He saw first the moral bankruptcy of his own
class, then their widespread financial ruin; and though he helped to
break their political power, and in so doing earned the general love of
his countrymen, yet the troubles which beset the landlord class did not
spare him, and he died, broken-hearted, forty-three years ago, at the
beginning of a struggle which is not ended yet. It is well worth while
to consider the circumstances of that stormy career.
First a brilliant schoolboy, then an idle law student, George Henry
Moore was driven to travel by the complications of a passionate love
affair, and he travelled adventurously, being a pioneer of exploration
in the Caucasus and Syria. Sketches reproduced in the book show that he
could draw no less well than he wrote. Returning to Ireland at the age
of twenty-seven, he devoted himself entirely to hunting and racing, and
few men were better known on the turf, nor were there even in the West
of Ireland more desperate riders than his brother and himself. George
Henry was carried off the field at Cahir in 1843 to all appearance dead;
he was alive enough to hear discussion as to his burial. Augustus, less
lucky, died of a fall he took riding Mickey Free in the Grand National
two years later. The brothers were closely bound to each other in
affection, and this was a heavy blow to the survivor; but George Moore
continued to race, and in 1846 made the coup of his life, winning
L10,000 on "Coranna" for the Chester Cup. He sent L1,000 of it home for
distribution among his tenants, and there was soon sore need of the
money, for that year saw the second and disastrous failure of the potato
crop. The Irish Famine made the turning-point in Moore's history, as in
that of his class. The catastrophe which brought him into public life
and into the service of his country demonstrated, cruelly enough--though
this was the least of its cruelties--the futility of the Irish gentry as
a whole.
By the shock of his brother's death in 1845 Moore's mind had been turned
to serious thoughts. Matter was not lacking. The report of the Devon
Commission upon Irish land, joined to the first failure of the potato
crop--with its accompaniment of distress and widespread agrarian
crime--gave any Irish landlord food for reflection, and in March, 1846,
when a vacancy occurred in the representation of Mayo, Moore came
forward as a Whig candidate. The whole landlord interest was at his
back, but a Repealer opposed him, and O'Connell's influence carried the
day. There were fierce encounters, the landlords marching their tenants
to the poll under guards of soldiers, the popular side falling upon
these escorts and sometimes carrying off the voters--or enabling them to
escape. One of Moore's friends, Mr. Browne, afterwards Lord Oranmore,
wrote: "I now see we owe our lives to the priests, as they can excite
the whole people against us whenever they like. Whatever may be the
cause, Ireland needs reconquering."
That was a typical expression of the gentry's view. Plainly Ireland was
in rebellion when landlords could no longer carry their tenants to the
polls to vote as the landlord directed. Moore however differed from the
generality of Irish landlords in one important respect. He was not
divided by religion from the people over whom he ruled, and he can never
have had Mr. Browne's feeling of aloofness from Ireland as a country
which might need reconquering to re-establish the ascendancy of the
"English garrison"; nor was it natural to him to distrust the priests as
leaders of a separate and subject race.
In the autumn of 1846, when the threat of famine had become a
certainty, Moore came home to Mayo, where there was grim business to be
done. His tenants, on an estate running up into the wild Partry
mountains, numbered five thousand souls. For their benefit he utilised
far more of his winnings on "Coranna" than the tithe which he had
originally ear-marked; and not one of all these his dependants died of
want in that outlandish region, though in places far less remote death
was ravenous. He was chairman of the Relief Board for the whole county,
and slaved at his task--not harder than other landlords in other parts
of Ireland. But his methods were more drastic, his view of the situation
clearer. Folk must have rubbed their eyes and perhaps stopped to think
twice when the owner of "Wolfdog," of "Anonymous," and a score of other
famous horses, wrote, in answer to a request for his annual subscription
to the local races, that he thought the county of Mayo "as little fit to
be the scene of such festivities as he to contribute to their
celebration."
But Moore did not content himself with mere administration of relief. He
saw that the English Government was apathetic and incompetent to face so
terrible an affliction, and he took in hand to create within his own
class an organised force of Irish opinion to bind together the ruling
Irishmen for the good of Ireland. In company with his friend and
kinsman, Lord Sligo, he "travelled through twenty-seven counties and
personally conferred with most of the leading men in Ireland on the
urgent necessity of a united effort to save the sinking people." The
result was that between sixty and seventy members of Parliament and some
forty peers pledged themselves to endeavour to secure united action
upon measures regarding Ireland in the new session. On the 14th of
January, 1847, the Irish landlord class held such a muster as had not
been seen since the Union. "Nearly twenty peers, more than thirty
members of Parliament, and at least six hundred gentlemen of name and
station took part in it. The meeting called on Government to prohibit
export of food stuffs and to sacrifice any sum that might be required to
save the lives of the people." It passed thirty resolutions without
dissension; and then some one asked what was to be done if the
Government refused to adopt any of their suggestions. Would Irish
members then unite to vote against the Government? To this, Irish
members refused to pledge themselves, and Moore, as he said afterwards,
"saw at a glance that the confederacy had broken down."
That was the end of the revolt of the Irish gentry. It was really the
decisive moment of their failure; disorganised and futile, they went
down by scores in the ruin of the Encumbered Estates Court, while their
tenants were marking with their bones a road across the Atlantic. As for
the landlords who were popular leaders, within a few months after that
great assembly, Daniel O'Connell, who had proposed the first resolution,
died in Rome, heart-broken. A few months more and Smith O'Brien, the
mover of another resolution, headed a rebellion in sheer despair.
Smith O'Brien had twenty years of parliamentary life behind him when he
was driven to the wild protest of insurrection. Twenty years of the same
experience were to bring Moore to a very similar attitude; but in 1847
Moore was hopeful of building up in Parliament the nucleus of an
Independent Irish Party. When the dissolution came, in 1847, he stood
for a second time, but as an Independent, and his work in the famine
times carried at least its recognition. Every single elector who went to
the poll gave one of his two votes to the Independent. He went to
Westminster and denounced with equal energy the agrarian murders, which
were then rife in Ireland, and those organs of publicity in England
which sought to magnify these outrages into an indictment against the
Irish nation. The ferment of indignation against English methods had not
yet died out in the hearts of Irish landlords. Lord Sligo, writing to
Moore concerning the controversy which followed, used these words: "I
believe that _The Times_ did much to cause the feeling which resulted in
landlord and parson shooting; it will end by turning us all into
Repealers." If only it had! But Moore got no help from the landlord
class, and the well-to-do Catholic professional men with whom he was
principally allied proved themselves unable to resist the temptations of
office and of personal interest. In the days of Sadleir and Keogh he
fought a desperate fight against Whig place-seekers; his reward was to
be finally unseated (in 1857) on an election petition, the charge being
that spiritual intimidation had been exercised on his behalf by the
priests. As Colonel Moore observes, if a landlord threatened his tenants
with disfavour, which meant eviction, that was "only a legitimate
exercise of their rights of property"; but if a priest told his flock
that a man would imperil his soul by selling his vote or prostituting it
to the use of a despot, the candidate whom that priest supported would
lose his seat and be disqualified for re-election.
From this time onward George Henry Moore found himself heading the same
way as Smith O'Brien had gone. In 1861 he told the Irish people that if
they desired freedom they must take a lesson from Italy; they must
"become dangerous"; and he advocated the formation of a new Irish
volunteer force to emulate that of 1782. Nothing came of this; but after
the American war a new movement grew up, not this time among the
landlords or the professional men, nor countenanced by the priests, but
nursed in the fierce heart of the people. Ireland had become dangerous.
Colonel Moore recognises rightly the difference between the Fenian
organisation and the Young Ireland movement which had preceded it. Both
were idealistic, but the idealism of 1848 was "the inspiration of a few
literary gentlemen, poets, and writers." Smith O'Brien, its titular
head, was influenced profoundly by the aristocratic conception of his
rightful place as representing the Kings of Thomond. Fenianism was
democratic; it was officered largely by men who had themselves fought in
the most stubborn of modern wars and who had seen what Irish regiments
could do in the citizen levies of Federals and Confederates. It was
spontaneous, and it was strong; the measure of its strength is given not
by the few flickering outbreaks easily suppressed, but by the terror
which it inspired, and by the change which it wrought in the spirit of
the people. Moore when he took the step, extraordinary for a man in his
position, of enrolling himself in that sworn and secret conspiracy can
hardly have failed to foresee the collapse of Fenianism as a fighting
force; but he recognised that (in his son's words) "the old complacent
toleration of schemers and dishonest politicians had vanished and a
sturdy independence had taken its place."
With the advent of that spirit the power of the Irish landlords was
doomed. They had made their choice; when they might have made common
cause with the whole people of Ireland they had refused to rise beyond
their immediate personal advantage and the interests of their class.
Moore, who was of themselves, who shared all their pleasures, who loved
them, was forced to take a hand in their overthrow. From 1858 onward he
had been almost entirely out of politics, living the life of a popular
country gentleman, racing and hunting more successfully than ever; his
most famous horse, "Croagh Patrick," ran in the 'sixties. But in 1868 he
flung all this aside, sold his horses, and undertook to fight the
alliance of Whig and Tory which had dominated County Mayo in the
landlord interest for ten years.
I shall have the question settled (he said) whether one lord shall
drive a hundred human souls to the hustings, another fifty, another
a score; whether this or that squire shall call twenty, or ten, or
five as good men as himself "his voters" and send them up with his
brand on their backs to vote for an omadhaun at his bidding.