that which we are now discussing; but there has been no statesmanship.
Men, the most clumsy and brutal, can do these things; but we want men of
higher temper--men of higher genius--men of higher patriotism to deal
with the affairs of Ireland. I should like to know whether those
statesmen who hold great offices have themselves comprehended the nature
of this question. If they have not, they have been manifestly ignorant;
and if they have comprehended it and have not dealt with it, they have
concealed that which they knew from the people, and evaded the duty they
owed to their Sovereign. I do not want to speak disrespectfully of men
in office. It is not my custom in this House. I know something of the
worrying labours to which they are subjected, and I know not how from
day to day they bear the burden of the labour imposed upon them; but
still I lament that those who wear the garb--enjoy the emoluments--and I
had almost said usurp the dignity of statesmanship, sink themselves
merely into respectable and honourable administrators, when there is a
whole nation under the sovereignty of the Queen calling for all their
anxious thoughts--calling for the highest exercise of the highest
qualities of the statesman.
I put the question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He is the only
man of this Government whom I have heard of late years who has spoken as
if he comprehended this question, and he made a speech in the last
Session of Parliament which was not without its influence both in
England and in Ireland. I should like to ask him whether this Irish
question is above the stature of himself and of his Colleagues? If it
be, I ask them to come down from the high places which they occupy, and
try to learn the art of legislation and government before they practise
it. I myself believe, if we could divest ourselves of the feelings
engendered by party strife, we might come to some better result. Take
the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Is there in any legislative assembly in
the world a man, as the world judges, of more transcendent capacity? I
will say even, is there a man with a more honest wish to do good to the
country in which he occupies so conspicuous a place?
Take the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the leader of the Opposition--is
there in any legislative assembly in the world, at this moment, a man
leading an Opposition of more genius for his position, who has given in
every way but one in which proof can be given that he is competent to
the highest duties of the highest offices of the State? Well, but these
men--great men whom we on this side and you on that side, to a large
extent, admire and follow fight for office, and the result is they sit
alternately, one on this side and one on that. But suppose it were
possible for these men, with their intellects, with their far-reaching
vision, to examine this question thoroughly, and to say for once,
whether this leads to office and to the miserable notoriety that men
call fame which springs from office, or not, 'If it be possible, we will
act with loyalty to the Sovereign and justice to the people; and if it
be possible, we will make Ireland a strength and not a weakness to the
British Empire.' It is from this fighting with party, and for party, and
for the gains which party gives, that there is so little result from the
great intellect of such men as these. Like the captive Samson of old,--
They grind in brazen fetters, under task,
With their Heaven-gifted strength--'
and the country and the world gain little by those faculties which God
has given them for the blessing of the country and the world.
The Secretary of State and the right hon. Gentleman opposite have
referred, even in stronger language, to the unhappy fact that much of
what now exists in Ireland has been brought there from the United States
of America. That is not a fact for us to console ourselves with; it only
adds to the gravity and the difficulty of this question. You may depend
upon it that if the Irish in America, having left this country, settle
there with so strong a hostility to us, they have had their reasons--and
if being there with that feeling of affection for their native country
which in all other cases in which we are not concerned we admire and
reverence, they interfere in Ireland and stir up there the sedition that
now exists, depend upon it there is in the condition of Ireland a state
of things which greatly favours their attempts. There can be no
continued fire without fuel, and all the Irish in America, and all the
citizens of America, united together, with all their organization and
all their vast resources, would not raise the very slightest flame of
sedition or of insurrectionary movement in England or in Scotland. I
want to know why they can do it in Ireland? Are you to say, as some
people say in America and in Jamaica when speaking of the black man,
that 'Nothing can be made of the Irishman'?
Everything can be made of him in every country but his own. When he has
passed through the American school--I speak of him as a child, or in the
second generation of the Irish emigrant in that country--he is as
industrious, as frugal, as independent, as loyal, as good a citizen of
the American Republic, as any man born within the dominions of that
Power. Why is it not so in Ireland? I have asked the question before,
and I will ask it again--it is a pertinent question, and it demands an
answer. Why is it that no Scotchman who leaves Scotland--and the Scotch
have been taunted and ridiculed for being so ready to leave their
country for a better climate and a better soil--how comes it, I ask,
that no Scotchman who emigrates to the United States, and no Englishman
who plants himself there, cherishes the smallest hostility to the
people, to the institutions, or to the Government of his native country?
Why does every Irishman who leaves his country and goes to the United
States immediately settle himself down there, resolved to better his
condition in life, but with a feeling of ineradicable hatred to the laws
and institutions of the land of his birth? Is not this a fit question
for statesmanship?
If the Secretary of State, since his last measure was brought in, now
eighteen years ago, had had time, in the multiplicity of his duties, to
consider this question; instead of now moving for the suspension of the
Habeas Corpus Act, he might possibly have been rejoicing at the
universal loyalty which prevailed, not throughout Great Britain only,
but throughout the whole population of Ireland. I spent two autumns in
Ireland in the years 1849 and 1852, and I recollect making a speech in
this House not long afterwards, which some persons thought was not very
wide of the mark. I recommended the Ministers of that time to take an
opportunity to hold an Irish Session of the Imperial Parliament--to have
no great questions discussed connected with the ordinary matters which
are brought before us, but to keep Parliament to the consideration of
this Irish question solely, and to deal with those great matters which
are constant sources of complaint; and I said that a Session that was so
devoted to such a blessed and holy work, would be a Session, if it were
successful, that would stand forth in all our future history as one of
the noblest which had ever passed in the annals of the Imperial
Parliament.
Now, Sir, a few days ago everybody in this House, with two or three
exceptions, was taking an oath at that table. It is called the Oath of
Allegiance. It is meant at once to express loyalty and to keep men
loyal. I do not think it generally does bind men to loyalty, if they
have not loyalty without it. I hold loyalty to consist, in a country
like this, as much in doing justice to the people as in guarding the
Crown; for I believe there is no guardianship of the Crown in a country
like this, where the Crown is not supposed to rest absolutely upon
force, so safe as that of which we know more in our day probably than
has been known in former periods of our history, when the occupant of
the Throne is respected, admired, and loved by the general people. Now,
how comes it that these great statesmen whom I have named, with all
their Colleagues, some of them as eminent almost as their leaders, have
never tried what they could do--have never shown their loyalty to the
Crown by endeavouring to make the Queen as safe in the hearts of the
people of Ireland as she is in the hearts of the people of England and
of Scotland?
Bear in mind that the Queen of England can do almost nothing in these
matters. By our Constitution the Crown can take no direct part in them.
The Crown cannot direct the policy of the Government; nay, the Crown
cannot, without the consent of this House, even select its Ministers;
therefore the Crown is helpless in this matter. And we have in this
country a Queen, who, in all the civilized nations of the world, is
looked upon as a model of a Sovereign, and yet her name and fame are
discredited and dishonoured by circumstances such as those which have
twice during her reign called us together to agree to a proposition like
that which is brought before us to-day.
There is an instructive anecdote to be found in the annals of the
Chinese Empire. In a remote province there was an insurrection. The
Emperor put down the insurrection, but he abased and humbled himself
before the people, and said that if he had been guilty of neglect he
acknowledged his guilt, and he humbled himself before those on whom he
had brought the evil of an insurrection in one of his provinces. The
Queen of these realms is not so responsible. She cannot thus humble
herself; but I say that your statesmen for the last forty--for the last
sixty--years are thus guilty, and that they ought to humble themselves
before the people of this country for their neglect. But I have heard
from Members in this House--I have seen much writing in newspapers--and
I have heard of speeches elsewhere, in which some of us, who advocate
what we believe to be a great and high morality in public affairs, are
charged with dislike to the institutions, and even disloyalty to the
dynasty which rules in England. There can be nothing more offensive,
nothing more unjust, nothing more utterly false. We who ask Parliament,
in dealing with Ireland, to deal with it upon the unchangeable
principles of justice, are the friends of the people, and the really
loyal advisers and supporters of the Throne.
All history teaches us that it is not in human nature that men should be
content under any system of legislation, and of institutions such as
exist in Ireland. You may pass this Bill, you may put the Home
Secretary's five hundred men into gaol--you may do more than this, you
may suppress the conspiracy and put down the insurrection, but the
moment it is suppressed there will still remain the germs of this
malady, and from those germs will grow up as heretofore another crop of
insurrection and another harvest of misfortune. And it may be that those
who sit here eighteen years after this moment will find another Ministry
and another Secretary of State ready to propose to you another
administration of the same ever-failing and ever-poisonous medicine. I
say there is a mode of making Ireland loyal. I say that the Parliament
of England having abolished the Parliament of Ireland is doubly bound to
examine what that mode is, and, if it can discover it, to adopt it. I
say that the Minister who occupies office in this country, merely that
he may carry on the daily routine of administration, who dares not
grapple with this question, who dares not go into Opposition, and who
will sit anywhere except where he can tell his mind freely to the House
and to the country, may have a high position in the country, but he is
not a statesman, nor is he worthy of the name.
Sir, I shall not oppose the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman. The
circumstances, I presume, are such that the course which is about to be
pursued is perhaps the only merciful course for Ireland. But I suppose
it is not the intention of the Government, in the case of persons who
are arrested, and against whom any just complaint can be made, to do
anything more than that which the ordinary law permits, and that when
men are brought to trial they will be brought to trial with all the
fairness and all the advantages which the ordinary law gives. I should
say what was most unjust to the Gentlemen sitting on that (the Treasury)
bench, if I said aught else than that I believe they are as honestly
disposed to do right in this matter as I am and as I have ever been. I
implore them, if they can, to shake off the trammels of doubt and fear
with regard to this question, and to say something that may be soothing--
something that may give hope to Ireland.
I voted the other night with the hon. Member for Tralee (The
O'Donoghue). We were in a very small minority. ['Hear, hear,'] Yes, I
have often been in small minorities. The hon. Gentleman would have been
content with a word of kindness and of sympathy, not for conspiracy, but
for the people of Ireland. That word was not inserted in the Queen's
speech, and to-night the Home Secretary has made a speech urging the
House to the course which, I presume, is about to be pursued; but he did
not in that speech utter a single sentence with regard to a question
which lies behind, and is greater and deeper than that which is
discussed.
I hope, Sir, that if Ministers feel themselves bound to take this course
of suspending the common rights of personal freedom to a whole nation,
at least they will not allow this debate to close without giving to us
and to that nation some hope that before long measures will be
considered and will be introduced which will tend to create the same
loyalty in Ireland that exists in Great Britain. If every man outside
the walls of this House who has the interest of the whole Empire at
heart were to speak here, what would he say to this House? Let not one
day elapse, let not another Session pass, until you have done something
to wipe off this blot--for blot it is upon the reign of the Queen, and
scandal it is to the civilization and to the justice of the people of
this country.
* * * * *
IRELAND.
VI.
DUBLIN, OCTOBER 30, 1866.
[Mr. Bright was invited to a Public Banquet in Dublin. The invitation
was signed by more than twenty Members of Parliament, and by a large
number of influential Members of the Liberal Party in Ireland. This
speech was spoken at the Banquet. The O'Donoghue was in the Chair.]
I feel myself more embarrassed than I can well describe at the difficult
but honourable position in which I find myself to-night. I am profoundly
moved by the exceeding and generous kindness with which you have
received me, and all I can do is to thank you for it, and to say how
grateful to my heart it is that such a number as I see before me--I will
say of my countrymen--have approved generally of the political course
which I have pursued. But I may assure you that the difficulty of this
position is not at all of my seeking. I heard during the last Session of
Parliament that if I was likely to come to Ireland during the autumn, it
was not improbable that I should be asked to some banquet of this kind
in this city. I had an intention of coming, but being moved by this
kindness or menace, I changed my mind, and spent some weeks in Scotland
instead of Ireland. When I found from the newspapers that an invitation
was being signed, asking me to come here, I wrote to my honourable
friend, Sir John Gray, to ask him if he would be kind enough to put an
extinguisher upon the project, inasmuch as I was not intending to cross
the Channel. He said that the matter had proceeded so far that it was
impossible to interfere with it--that it must take its natural course;
and the result was that I received an invitation signed, I think, by
about one hundred and forty names, amongst whom there were not less, I
believe, than twenty-two Members of the House of Commons. Well, as you
will probably imagine, I felt that this invitation was of such a nature
that, although it was most difficult to accede to it, it was impossible
to refuse it. This accounts for my being here to-night, and is a simple
explanation of what has taken place.
I said amongst the signatures were the names of not less than twenty-two
Members of the House of Commons. I speak with grief when I say that one
of our friends who signed that invitation is no longer with us. I had
not the pleasure of a long acquaintance with Mr. Dillon, but I shall
take this opportunity of saying that during the last Session of
Parliament I formed a very high opinion of his character. There was that
in his eye and in the tone of his voice--in his manner altogether, which
marked him for an honourable and a just man. I venture to say that his
sad and sudden removal is a great loss to Ireland. I believe amongst all
her worthy sons, Ireland has had no worthier and no nobler son than John
Blake Dillon.
I shall not be wrong if I assume that the ground of my visit to Dublin
is to be found first in the sympathy which I have always felt and
expressed for the condition, and for the wrongs, and for the rights of
the people of Ireland, and probably also because I am supposed, in some
degree, to represent some amount of the opinion in England, which is
also favourable to the true interests of this island.
The Irish question is a question that has often been discussed, and yet
it remains at this day as much a question as it has been for centuries
past. The Parliament of Kilkenny,--a Parliament that sat a very long
time ago, if indeed it was a Parliament at all,--it was a Parliament
that sat about five hundred years ago, which proposed, I believe, to
inflict a very heavy penalty if any Irishman's horse was found grazing
on any Englishman's land,--this Parliament left on record a question,
which it may be worth our while to consider to-night. It put this
question to the King, 'How comes it to pass that the King was never the
richer for Ireland?' We, five hundred years afterwards, venture to ask
this question, 'Why is it that the Queen, or the Crown, or the United
Kingdom, or the Empire, is never the richer for Ireland?'--and if you
will permit me I will try to give you as clearly as I can something like
an answer to that very old question. What it may be followed by is this,
How is it that we, the Imperial Parliament, cannot act so as to bring
about in Ireland contentment and tranquillity, and a solid union between
Ireland and Great Britain? And that means, further, How can we improve
the condition and change the minds of the people of Ireland? Some say (I
have heard many who say it in England, and I am afraid there are
Irishmen also who would say it), that there is some radical defect in
the Irish character which prevents the condition of Ireland being so
satisfactory as is the condition of England and of Scotland. Now, I am
inclined to believe that whatever there is that is defective in any
portion of the Irish people comes not from their race, but from their
history, and from the conditions to which they have been subjected.
I am told by those in authority that in Ireland there is a remarkable
absence of crime. I have heard since I came to Dublin, from those well
acquainted with the facts, that there is probably no great city in the
world--in the civilized and Christian world--of equal population with
the city in which we are now assembled, where there is so little crime
committed. And I find that the portion of the Irish people which has
found a home in the United States has in the period of sixteen years--
between 1848 and 1864--remitted about 13,000,000_l_. sterling to
their friends and relatives in Ireland. I am bound to place these facts
in opposition to any statements that I hear as to any radical defects of
the Irish character. I say that it would be much more probable that the
defect lies in the Government and in the law. But there are some others
who say that the great misfortune of Ireland is in the existence of the
noxious race of political agitators. Well, as to that I may state, that
the most distinguished political agitators that have appeared during the
last hundred years in Ireland are Grattan and O'Connell, and I should
say that he must be either a very stupid or a very base Irishman who
would wish to erase the achievements of Grattan and O'Connell from the
annals of his country.
But some say (and this is not an uncommon thing)--some say that the
priests of the popular Church in Ireland have been the cause of much
discontent. I believe there is no class of men in Ireland who have a
deeper interest in a prosperous and numerous community than the priests
of the Catholic Church; and further, I believe that no men have suffered
more--have suffered more, I mean, in mind and in feeling--from
witnessing the miseries and the desolation which during the last century
(to go no further back) have stricken and afflicted the Irish people.
But some others say that there is no ground of complaint, because the
laws and institutions of Ireland are, in the main, the same as the laws
and institutions of England and Scotland. They say, for example, that if
there be an Established Church in Ireland there is one in England and
one in Scotland, and that Nonconformists are very numerous both in
England and in Scotland; but they seem to forget this fact, that the
Church in England or the Church in Scotland is not in any sense a
foreign Church--that it has not been imposed in past times, and is not
maintained by force--that it is not in any degree the symbol of
conquest--that it is not the Church of a small minority, absorbing the
ecclesiastical revenues and endowments of a whole kingdom; and they omit
to remember or to acknowledge that if any Government attempted to plant
by force the Episcopal Church in Scotland or the Catholic Church in
England, the disorders and discontent which have prevailed in Ireland
would be witnessed with tenfold intensity and violence in Great Britain.
And these persons whom I am describing also say that the land laws in
Ireland are the same as the land laws in England. It would be easy to
show that the land laws in England are bad enough, and that but for the
outlet of the population, afforded by our extraordinary manufacturing
industry, the condition of England would in all probability become quite
as bad as the condition of Ireland has been; but if the countries differ
with regard to land and the management of it in their customs, may it
not be reasonable that they should also differ in their laws?
In Ireland the landowner is the creature of conquest, not of conquest of
eight hundred years ago, but of conquest completed only two hundred
years ago; and it may be well for us to remember, and for all Englishmen
to remember, that succeeding that transfer of the land to the new-comers
from Great Britain, there followed a system of law, known by the name of
the Penal Code, of the most ingenious cruelty, and such as, I believe,
has never in modern times been inflicted on any Christian people.
Unhappily, on this account, the wound which was opened by the conquest
has never been permitted to be closed, and thus we have had landowners
in Ireland of a different race, of a different religion, and of
different ideas from the great bulk of the people, and there has been a
constant and bitter war between the owners and occupiers of the soil.
Now, up to this point I suppose that oven the gentlemen who were dining
together the other evening in Belfast would probably agree with me,
because what I have stated is mere matter of notorious history, and to
be found in every book which has treated of the course of Irish affairs
during the last two hundred years. But I think they would agree with me
even further than this. They would say that Ireland is a land which has
been torn by religious factions, and torn by these factions at least in
the North as much as in the South; and I think they would be doing less
than justice to the inhabitants of the North if they said that they had
in any degree come short of the people of the South in the intensity of
their passionate feelings with regard to their Church.