BROTHERS.
I had landed in America at the moment of what is known in Canada as “the
great scare”--that is, the Fenian invasion at Fort Erie. Before going
South, I had attended at New York a Fenian meeting held to protest
against the conduct of the President and Mr. Seward, who, it was
asserted, after deluding the Irish with promises of aid, had abandoned
them, and even seized their supplies and arms. The chief speaker of the
evening was Mr. Gibbons, of Philadelphia, “Vice-President of the Irish
Republic,” a grave and venerable man; no rogue or schemer, but an
enthusiast as evidently convinced of the justice as of the certainty of
the ultimate triumph of the cause.
At Chicago, I went to the monster meeting at which Speaker Colfax
addressed the Brotherhood; at Buffalo, I was present at the “armed
picnic” which gave the Canadian government so much trouble. On Lake
Michigan, I went on board a Fenian ship; in New York, I had a
conversation with an ex-rebel officer, a long-haired Georgian, who was
wearing the Fenian uniform of green-and-gold in the public streets. The
conclusion to which I came was, that the Brotherhood has the support of
ninety-nine hundredths of the Irish in the States. As we are dealing not
with British, but with English politics and life, this is rather a fact
to be borne in mind than a text upon which to found a homily; still, the
nature of the Irish antipathy to Britain is worth a moment‘s
consideration; and the probable effect of it upon the future of the race
is a matter of the gravest import.
The Fenians, according to a Chicago member of the Roberts’ wing, seek to
return to the ancient state of Ireland, of which we find the history in
the Brehon laws--a communistic tenure of land (resembling, no doubt,
that of the Don Cossacks), and a republic or elective kingship. Such are
their objects; nothing else will in the least conciliate the Irish in
America. No abolition of the Establishment, no reform of land-laws, no
Parliament on College Green, nothing that England can grant while
preserving the shadow of union, can dissolve the Fenian league.
All this is true, and yet there is another great Irish nation to which,
if you turn, you find that conciliation may still avail us. The Irish in
Ireland are not Fenians in the American sense: they hate us, perhaps,
but they may be mollified; they are discontented, but they may be
satisfied; customs and principles of law, the natural growth of the
Irish mind and the Irish soil, can be recognized, and made the basis of
legislation, without bringing about the disruption of the empire.
The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to
understand is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to the Irish
as freeholding to the English people. All that is needed of our
statesmen is, that they recognize in legislation that which they cannot
but admit in private talk--namely, that there may be essential
differences between race and race.
The results of legislation which proceeds upon this basis may follow
very slowly upon the change of system, for there is at present no
nucleus whatever for the feeling of amity which we would create. Even
the alliance of the Irish politicians with the English Radicals is
merely temporary; the Irish antipathy to the English does not
distinguish between Conservative and Radical. Years of good government
will be needed to create an alliance against which centuries of
oppression and wrong-doing protest. We may forget, but the Irish will
hardly find themselves able to forget at present that, while we make New
Zealand savages British citizens as well as subjects, protect them in
the possession of their lands, and encourage them to vote at our
polling-booths, and take their place as constables and officers of the
law, our fathers “planted” Ireland, and declared it no felony to kill an
Irishman on his mother-soil.
In spite of their possession of much political power, and of the entire
city government of several great towns, the Irish in America are neither
physically nor morally well off. Whatever may be the case at some future
day, they still find themselves politically in English hands. The very
language that they are compelled to speak is hateful, even to men who
know no other. With an impotent spite which would be amusing were it not
very sad, a resolution was carried by acclamation through both houses of
the Fenian congress, at Philadelphia, this year, “that the word
‘English’ be unanimously dropped, and that the words ‘American language’
be used in the future.”
From the Cabinet, from Congress, from every office, high or low, not
controlled by the Fenian vote, the Irish are systematically excluded;
but it cannot be American public opinion which has prevented the
Catholic Irish from rising as merchants and traders, even in New York.
Yet, while there are Belfast names high up on the Atlantic side and in
San Francisco, there are none from Cork, none from the southern
counties. It would seem as though the true Irishman wants the
perseverance to become a successful merchant, and thrives best at pure
brain-work, or upon land. Three-fourths of the Irish in America remain
in towns, losing the attachment to the soil which is the strongest
characteristic of the Irish in Ireland, and finding no new home:
disgusted at their exclusion in America from political life and power,
it is these men who turn to Fenianism as a relief. Through drink,
through gambling, and the other vices of homeless, thriftless men, they
are soon reduced to beggary; and, moral as they are by nature, the Irish
are nevertheless supplying America with that which she never before
possessed--a criminal and pauper class. Of ten thousand people sent to
jail each year in Massachusetts, six thousand are Irish born; in
Chicago, out of the 3598 convicts of last year, only eighty-four were
native born Americans.
To the Americans, Fenianism has many aspects. The greater number hate
the Irish, but sympathize profoundly with Ireland. Many are so desirous
of seeing republicanism prevail throughout the world that they support
the Irish republic in any way, except, indeed, by taking its paper
money, and look upon its establishment as a first step toward the
erection of a free government that shall include England and Scotland as
well. Some think the Fenians will burn the Capitol and rob the banks;
some regard them with satisfaction, or the reverse, from the religious
point of view. One of the latter kind of lookers-on said to me: “I was
glad to see the Fenian movement, not that I wish success to the
Brotherhood as against you English, but because I rejoice to see among
Irishmen a powerful center of resistance to the Catholic Church. We, in
this country, were being delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the
Roman Church, and these Fenians, by their power and their violence
against the priests, have divided the Irish camp and rescued us.” The
unfortunate Canadians, for their part, ask why they should be shot and
robbed because Britain maltreats the Irish; but we must not forget that
the Fenian raid on Canada was an exact repetition, almost on the same
ground, of the St. Alban‘s raid into the American territory during the
rebellion.
The Fenians would be as absolutely without strength in America as they
are without credit were it not for the anti-British traditions of the
Democratic party, and the rankling of the Alabama question, or rather of
the remembrance of our general conduct during the rebellion, in the
hearts of the Republicans. It is impossible to spend much time in New
England without becoming aware that the people of the six Northeastern
States love us from the heart. Nothing but this can explain the
character of their feeling toward us on these Alabama claims. That we
should refuse an arbitration upon the whole question is to them
inexplicable, and they grieve with wondering sorrow at our perversity.
It is not here that the legal question need be raised; for observers of
the present position of the English race it is enough that there exists
between Britain and America a bar to perfect friendship--a ground for
future quarrel--upon which we refuse to allow an all-embracing
arbitration. We allege that we are the best judges of a certain portion
of the case, that our dignity would be compromised by arbitration upon
these points; but such dignity must always be compromised by
arbitration, for common friends are called in only when each party to
the dispute has a case, in the justice of which his dignity is bound up.
Arbitration is resorted to as a means of avoiding wars; and, dignity or
no dignity, everything that can cause war is proper matter for
arbitration. What even if some little dignity be lost by the affair, in
addition to that which has been lost already? No such loss can be set
against the frightful hurtfulness to the race and to the cause of
freedom, of war between Britain and America.
The question comes plainly enough to this point; we say we are right;
America says we are wrong; they offer arbitration, which we refuse upon
a point of etiquette--for on that ground we decline to refer to
arbitration a point which to America appears essential. It looks to the
world as though we offer to submit to the umpire chosen those points
only on which we are already prepared to admit that we are in the wrong.
America asks us to submit, as we should do in private life, the whole
correspondence on which the quarrel stands. Even if we, better
instructed in the precedents of international law than were the
Americans, could not but be in the right, still, as we know that
intelligent and able men in the United States think otherwise, and would
fancy their cause the just one in a war which might arise upon the
difficulty, surely there is ground for arbitration. It would be to the
eternal disgrace of civilization that we should set to work to cut our
brothers’ throats upon a point of etiquette; and, by declining on the
ground of honor to discuss these claims, we are compromising that honor
in the eyes of all the world.
In democracies such as America or France, every citizen feels an insult
to his country as an insult to himself. The Alabama question is in the
mouth or in the heart--which is worse--of every American who talks with
an Englishman in England or America.
All nations commit, at times, the error of acting as though they think
that every people on earth, except themselves, are unanimous in their
policy. Neglecting the race distinctions and the class distinctions
which in England are added to the universal essential differences of
minds, the Americans are convinced that, during the late war, we thought
as one man, and that, in this present matter of the Alabama claims, we
stand out and act as a united people.
A New Yorker with whom I stayed at Quebec--a shrewd but kindly
fellow--was an odd instance of the American incapacity to understand the
British nation, which almost equals our own inability to comprehend
America. Kind and hospitable to me, as is any American to every
Englishman in all times and places, he detested British policy, and
obstinately refused to see that there is an England larger than Downing
Street, a nation outside Pall Mall. “England was with the rebels
throughout the war.” “Excuse me; our ruling classes were so, perhaps,
but our rulers don‘t represent us any more than your 39th Congress
represents George Washington.” In America, where Congress does fairly
represent the nation, and where there has never been less than a quarter
of the body favorable to any policy which half the nation supported, men
cannot understand that there should exist a country which thinks one
way, but, through her rulers, speaks another. We may disown the national
policy, but we suffer for it.
The hospitality to Englishmen of the American England-hater is
extraordinary. An old Southerner in Richmond said to me in a breath,
“I‘d go and live in England if I didn‘t hate it as I do. England, sir,
betrayed us in the most scoundrelly way--talked of sympathy with the
South, and stood by to see us swallowed up. I _hate_ England, sir! Come
and stay a week with me at my place in ---- County. Going South to-day?
Well, then, you return this way next week. Come then! Come on Saturday
week.”
When we ask, “Why do you press the Alabama claims against us, and not
the Florida, the Georgia, and the Rappahannock claims against the
French?” the answer is: “Because we don‘t care about the French, and
what they do and think; besides, we owe them some courtesy after
bundling them out of Mexico in the way we did.” In truth there is among
Americans an exaggerated estimate of the offensive powers of Great
Britain; and such is the jealousy of young nations that this
exaggeration becomes of itself a cause of danger. Were the Americans as
fully convinced, as we ourselves are, of our total incapacity to carry
on a land war with the United States on the western side of the
Atlantic, the bolder spirits among them would cease to feel themselves
under an assumed necessity to show us our own weakness and their
strength.
The chief reason why America finds much to offend her in our conduct is,
that she cares for the opinion of no other people than the English.
America, before the terrible blow to her confidence and love that our
conduct during the rebellion gave, used morally to lean on England.
Happily for herself she is now emancipated from the mental thraldom; but
she still yearns toward our kindly friendship. A Napoleonic Senator
harangues, a French paper declaims, against America and Americans; who
cares? But a _Times_’ leader, or a speech in Parliament from a minister
of the Crown, cuts to the heart, wounding terribly. A nation, like an
individual, never quarrels with a stranger; there must be love at bottom
for even querulousness to arise. While I was in Boston, one of the
foremost writers of America said to me in conversation: “I have no son,
but I had a nephew of my own name; a grand fellow; young, handsome,
winning in his ways, full of family affections, an ardent student. He
felt it his duty to go to the front as a private in one of our regiments
of Massachusetts volunteers, and was promoted for bravery to a
captaincy. All of us here looked on him as a New England Philip Sidney,
the type of all that was manly, chivalrous, and noble. The very day that
I received news of his being killed in leading his company against a
regiment, I was forced by my duties here to read a leader in one of your
chief papers upon the officering of our army, in which it was more than
hinted that our troops consisted of German cut-throats and pot-house
Irish, led by sharpers and broken politicians. Can you wonder at my
being bitter?”
That there must be in America a profound feeling of affection for our
country is shown by the avoidance of war when we recognized the rebels
as belligerents; and, again, at the time of the _Trent_ affair, when
the surface cry was overwhelmingly for battle, and the cabinet only able
to tide it over by promising the West war with England as soon as the
rebellion was put down. “One war at a time, gentlemen,” said Lincoln.
The man who, of all in America, had most to lose by war with England,
said to me of the _Trent_ affair: “I was written to by C---- to do all I
could for peace. I wrote him back that if our attorney-general decided
that our seizure of the men was lawful, I would spend my last dollar in
the cause.”
The Americans, everywhere affectionate toward the individual Englishman,
make no secret of their feeling that the first advances toward a renewal
of the national friendship ought to come from us. They might remind us
that our Maori subjects have a proverb, “Let friends settle their
disputes as friends.”