everybody lives comfortably with his neighbour. But pass the bill and
what happens? The Catholic employes would become unmanageable, would
begin to kick over the traces, would want to dictate terms, would
attempt to dominate the Protestant section, which would rebel, and
trouble would ensue. They would not work together. It is impracticable
to say: Employ one faith only and Home Rule means that Catholicism is
to hold the sway. The Nationalist leaders foster this spirit,
otherwise there would be no Home Rule. The workpeople would act as
directed by the priest, even in matters connected with employment. You
have no idea what that means to us. It means ruin. The people do not
know their own mind, and their ignorance is amazing. My porter says
that when the bill becomes law, which will take place in one month
from date, he will have a situation in Dublin at a thousand a year,
and both he and others sincerely believe in such a changed state of
things for Catholics alone."
I went over Welch, Margetson's works, a wonderful place, where were
hundreds of women, clean and well-dressed, working at the various
departments of shirt-making. The highest class of mill hands I ever
saw, working in large and well-ventilated rooms, many getting a pound
a week. Another firm over the way employs one thousand five hundred
more. And according to the best authority, that of the owners, all
this is to leave the country when Ireland gets Home Rule.
A very intelligent Catholic farmer living a few miles out of Donegal
said, "Farmers look at the bill in the light of the land question.
We're not such fools as to believe in Gladstone or his bill for
anythin' else. Shure, Gladstone never invints anythin' at all, but
only waits till pressure is put on him. Shure, iverythin' has to be
dhragged out iv him, an' if he settles the land question, divil thank
him, 'tis because he knows he's bate out an' out, an' _has_ to do it,
whether he will or no. An' now he comes bowin' an' scrapin' an'
condiscindin' to relave us--whin we kicked it out o' his skin. Ah! the
divil sweep him an' his condiscinshun."
Ingratitude, thy name is Irish Tenant!
Misther O'Doherty proceeded to say that landlords were all right now,
under compulsion. But the tenantry demanded that they should be
released entirely from the landlords' yoke. He said that the
agriculturists were not in touch with the whole question of Home Rule,
nor would they consider any subject but that of the land. The
Nationalists had preached prairie value, and the people were tickled
by the idea of driving out landowners and Protestants. All the evicted
tenants, all the men who have no land, all the ne'er-do-weels would
expect to be satisfied. Ulster is tillage--the South is mostly
grazing. Ulster had been profitably cultivated by black Protestants,
and their land was coveted by the priests for their own people. My
friend admitted that, although born a Catholic, his religious opinions
were liberal. I asked him if the Protestant minority would be
comfortable under a Dublin Parliament. He shook his head
negatively--"Under equal laws they are friendly enough, but they do
not associate, they do not intermarry, they have little or nothing to
do with each other. They are like oil and wather in the same bottle,
ye can put them together but they won't mix. And the Protestant
minority has always been the best off, simply because they are hard
workers. A full-blooded Irishman is no worker. He likes to live from
hand to mouth, and that satisfies him. When he has enough to last him
a day through he drops work at once. The Protestants have Scotch
blood, and they go on working with the notion that they'll be better
off than their father, who was better off than their grandfather. And
that's the whole of it."
Mr. J. Gilbert Kennedy, of Donegal, holds similar views of Irish
indolence. He told me that although living in a congested district he
could not obtain men to dig in his gardens, except when thereto driven
by sheer necessity, and that having received a day's pay they would
not return to work so long as their money lasted. "They will put up
with semi-starvation, cold, and nakedness most patiently. Their
endurance is most commendable. They will bear anything, only--don't
ask them to work." Mrs. Kennedy said that with crowds of poor girls
around her, she was compelled to obtain kitchen maids and so forth
from Belfast. "They will not be servants, and when they afford casual
help, they do it as a great favour."
A Scotsman who employs five hundred men in the mechanical work said:
"I have been in Ireland fifteen years, and have gone on fairly
smoothly, but with a world of management. For the sake of peace I have
not five Protestants in the place; and I would have none if I could
help it. It is, however, necessary to have Protestant foremen.
Irishmen are not born mechanics. In Scotland and England men take to
the vice and the lathe like mother's milk, but here it is labour and
pain. Irishmen are not capable of steady, unremitting work. They want
a day on and a day off. They wish to be traders, cattle-drovers,
pig-jobbers, that they may wander from fair to fair. My men have
little to do beyond minding machines; otherwise I must have Scots or
English. Discharge a man and the most singular things occur. In a late
instance I had seven written requests from all sorts of quarters to
take the man back, although before discharge he had been duly warned.
The entire neighbourhood called on me--the man's father, wife, mother,
the priest, a Protestant lady, three whiskey-sellers, two
Presbyterians, the Church of Ireland parson, God knows who. This
lasted a fortnight, and then threatening letters set in; coffins,
skulls, and marrow-bones were chalked all over the place, with my
initials. Indeed you may say they are a wonderful people."
Mr. E.T. Herdman, J.P., of Sion Mills, Co. Tyrone, should know
something of the Irish people. The model village above-named belongs
to him. Travellers to Londonderry via the Great Northern will remember
how the great Herdman flax-spinning mills, with their clean,
prosperous, almost palatial appearance, relieve the melancholy aspect
of the peaty landscape about the Rivers Mourne and Derg. Mr. Herdman
pays in wages some L30,000 a year, a sum of which the magnitude
assumes colossal proportions in view of the surrounding landscape. The
people of the district speak highly of the Herdman family, who are
their greatest benefactors, but they failed to return Mr. E.T.
Herdman, who contested East Donegal in 1892. The people were willing
enough, but the priests stepped in and sent a Nationalist. Said Mr.
Herdman, "Home Rule would be fatal to England. The Irish people have
more affinity with the Americans or the French than with the English,
and the moment international difficulties arise Ireland would have to
be reconquered by force of arms. And complications would arise, and in
my estimation would arise very early." A landowner I met at Beragh,
County Tyrone, held somewhat original opinions. He said, "I refused to
identify myself with any Unionist movement. If we're going to be
robbed, let us be robbed; if our land is going to be confiscated, let
it be confiscated. The British Government is going to give us
something, if not much, by way of compensation; and my opinion is,
that if the Grand Old Man lives five years longer he'll propose to
give the Irish tenants the fee-simple of the lands without a penny to
pay. That's my view, begad. I'm a sportsman, not a politician, and my
wife says I'm a fool, and very likely she knows best. But, begad, I
say let us have prairie value to-day, for to-morrow the G.O.M. will
give us nothing at all."
The most extraordinary curiosity of Derry, the _lusus naturae_ of which
the citizens justly boast, is _the_ Protestant Home Ruler of brains
and integrity who, under the familiar appellation of John Cook, lives
in Waterloo Place. Reliable judges said, "Mr. Cook is a man of high
honour, and the most sincere patriot imaginable, besides being a
highly-cultured gentleman." So excited was I, so eager to see an Irish
Home Ruler combining these qualities with his political faith, that I
set off instanter in search of him, and having sought diligently till
I found him, intimated a desire to sit at his patriotic feet. He
consented to unburden his Nationalist bosom, and assuredly seemed to
merit the high character he everywhere bears. Having heard his opinion
on the general question, I submitted that Mr. Bull's difficulty was
lack of confidence, and that he might grant a Home Rule Bill, if the
Irish leaders were men of different stamp. He said they were "clever
men not overburdened with money," and admitted that a superior class
would have been more trustworthy, but relied on the people. "If the
first administrators of the law were dishonest, the people would
replace them by others. The keystone of my political faith is trust in
the people. The Irish are keen politicians, and may be trusted to keep
things square."
I submitted that the patriots were in the pay of the Irish-Americans,
who were no friends of England--
"The present Nationalist members are not purists, but to take money
for their services, to accept L300 a year is no more disgraceful than
the action of the Lord Chancellor who takes L10,000. The
American-Irish cherish a just resentment. They went away because they
were driven out of the country by the land system of that day. And the
Irish people must be allowed to regenerate themselves. It cannot be
done by England. Better let them go to hell in their own way than
attempt to spoon-feed them. But the injustice of former days does not
justify the injustice to the landlords proposed by the present bill.
It is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and would do more harm than good.
England should have a voice in fixing the price, for if the matter be
left to the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants
were buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found
that their four per cent. interest came lower than their rent. But
they have quite ceased to buy, and for the stipulated three years will
pay their rent as usual, and why? Because they expect the Irish
legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land
for nothing. Retributive justice is satisfied. For the last twenty
years the landlords have suffered fearfully. The present bill is
radically unsound, and I trust it will never become law."
And this was all that the one specimen of a Protestant Home Ruler I
have found in Ireland could say in favour of his views! His
intelligence and probity compelled him to denounce Mr. Gladstone's
Bill as "unjust" and radically unsound, and his patriotism caused him
to pray that it might never become law! I left him more Unionist than
ever.
The great Orange leader of Derry, Mr. John Guy Ferguson, once Grand
Ruler, and of world-wide fame, deprecated appeal to arms, except under
direst necessity. "I should recommend resistance to all except the
Queen's troops. Before all things a sincere loyalist, I should never
consent to fire a shot on them. Others think differently, and in case
of pressure and excitement the most regrettable things might happen.
The people of Derry are full of their great victory of 1688, and
believe that their one hundred and five days' resistance saved England
from Catholic tyranny. The Bishop of Derry, as you know, had ordered
that the troops of King James should be admitted when the thirteen
Prentice Boys closed the gate on the very nose of his army." I saw the
two white standards taken from the Catholic troops flanking the high
altar of the Cathedral; which also contains the grandly-carved case of
an organ taken from a wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588, just a
century before the siege. The people have ever before them these
warlike spoils, which may account for their martial spirit. An old
Prentice Boy told me of the great doings of 1870, how a Catholic
publican, one O'Donnell, endeavoured to prevent the annual marching of
the Boys, who on the anniversary of the raising of the siege, parade
the walls, fire guns, and burn traitor Lundy in effigy; how 5,000 men
in sleeve-waistcoats entered the town to stop the procession, how the
military intervened, and forbade both marching and burning; how the
Boys seized the Town Hall, and in face of 1,700 soldiers and police
burnt an effigy hanging from a high window, which the authorities
could not reach; how Colonel Hillier broke down the doors and stormed
the hall at the bayonet's point, to search both sexes for arms.
Gleefully he produced an alphabetical rhyme, which he thought rather
appropriate to the present time, and which ended as follows:--"X is
the excellent way they (the authorities) were beaten, and exceeding
amount of dirt they have eaten. Y is the yielding to blackguards
unshorn, which cannot and will not much longer be borne. Z is the zeal
with which England put down the Protestant boys who stood up for the
crown." In 1883 Lord Mayor Dawson of Dublin wished to lecture at
Derry, but the Boys took the Hall and held it, declining to permit the
"colleague of Carey" (on the Dublin Town Council) to speak in the
city. There you have the present spirit of Derry.
Two miles outside the town I came on a fine Home Ruler, who had
somewhere failed to sell a pig. "Sorra one o' me 'll do any good till
we get Home Rule." He paid L5 a year for two acres of land with a
house. "'Tis the one-half too much, Av I paid fifty shillings, I'd be
aisy," he said. Truly a small sum to stand between him and affluence.
I failed to sympathise with this worthy man, but my spirits fell as I
walked through a collar factory, and thought of Mr. Gladstone. The
dislocation of the shirt trade is less serious. Few Irish patriots
have any personal interest in this particular branch of industry.
Dublin, April 8th.
MR. BALFOUR IN DUBLIN.
Mr. Balfour is the most popular man in Ireland, and his Dublin visit
will be for ever memorable. The Leinster Hall, which holds several
thousands, was packed by half-past five; ninety minutes before
starting time, and the multitude outside was of enormous proportions.
The people were respectable, quiet, good-humoured, as are Unionist
crowds in general, though it was plain that the Dubliners are more
demonstrative than the Belfast men. The line of police in Hawkins
Street had much difficulty in regulating the surging throng which
pressed tumultuously on the great entrance without the smallest hope
of ever getting in. The turmoil of cheering and singing was incessant,
and everyone seemed under the influence of pleasurable excitement. As
you caught the eye of any member of the crowd he would smile with a
"What-a-day-we're-having" kind of expression. The college students
were in great form, cheering with an inexhaustible vigour, every man
smoking and carrying a "thrifle iv a switch." Portraits of Mr. Balfour
found a ready sale, and Tussaud's great exhibition of waxworks next
door to the hall was quite unable to compete with the living hero.
Messrs. Burke and Hare, Parnell and Informer Carey, Tim Healy and
Breeches O'Brien, Mr. Gladstone and Palmer the poisoner, with other
benefactors and philanthropists, were at a discount. The outsiders
were waiting to see Mr. Balfour, but they were disappointed. Lord
Iveagh's carriage suddenly appeared in Poolbeg Street at the
pressmen's entrance, and the hero slipped into the hall almost
unobserved. Inside, the enthusiasm was tremendous. The building is
planned like the Birmingham Town Hall, and the leading features of the
auditorium are similar. The orchestra was crowded to the ceiling, the
great gallery was closely packed, the windows were occupied, and every
inch of floor was covered. A band played "God Save the Queen," "Rule
Britannia," and the "Boyne Water." The word "Union," followed by the
names of Balfour, Abercorn, Iveagh, Hartington, Chamberlain, and
Goschen, was conspicuous on the side galleries, and over Mr. Balfour's
head was a great banner bearing the rose, thistle, and shamrock, with
the Union Jack and the English crown over all. Boldly-printed mottoes
in scarlet and white, such as "Quis Separabit?" "Union is strength,"
"We Won't submit to Home Rule," and "God Bless Balfour," abounded, and
in the galleries and on the floor men waved the British flag. The
people listened to the band, or amused themselves with patriotic songs
and Kentish fire, till Mr. Balfour arrived, when their cheering, loud
and long, was taken up outside, and reverberated through the city.
The preliminaries being over, the principal speaker rose amid
redoubled applause, which gradually subsided to the silence of intense
expectation. Mr. Balfour's first words fell like drops of water in a
thirsty land, and never had a speaker a more eager, attentive,
respectful audience. Now and then stentorian shouts of assent
encouraged him, but the listeners were mostly too much in earnest for
noise. It was plain that they meant business, and that the
demonstration was no mere empty tomfoolery. Parnellites were there--a
drop in the ocean--but their small efforts at interruption were
smilingly received. True, there was once a shout of "Throw him out,"
but a trumpet-like voice screamed "Give him a wash, 'tis what he
mostly needs, the crathur," upon which a roar of laughter proclaimed
that the offender was forgiven. The outsiders continued their singing
and cheering, and when Mr. Balfour concluded sent up a shout the like
of which Dublin has seldom heard, if ever. Succeeding speakers were
well received, the audience holding their ground. Mr. J. Hall, of
Cork, evoked great cheering by the affirmation that Protestants
desired no advantage, no privilege, unshared by their Catholic
brethren. Similar points made by other speakers met with an instant
and hearty confirmation that was unmistakable. Lord Sligo pointed out
that firmness and integrity were nowhere better understood than in
Ireland, and said that while William O'Brien, the great Nationalist,
visited Cork under a powerful escort of police, who with the utmost
difficulty prevented the populace from tearing him to pieces; on the
other hand, Mr. Balfour had passed through the length and breadth of
the land, visiting the poverty-stricken and disturbed districts of the
West, with no other protection beyond that afforded by "his
tender-hearted sister." Mr. Balfour rose to make a second speech, and
the enthusiasm reached its climax. The great ex-Secretary seemed
touched, and although speaking slowly showed more than his usual
emotion. When he concluded the people sent up a shout such as England
never hears--an original shout, long drawn out on a high musical note,
something like the unisonous tone of forty factory bulls.
The students went outside, and with their friends formed in military
columns--the outside files well armed with knobby sticks as a
deterrent to possible Parnellite enterprise. An extemporised arch of
Union Jacks canopied Mr. Balfour in his carriage, which was drawn by
hundreds of willing hands linked in long line. The column, properly
marshalled, moved away, keeping step amid loud shouts of "Right, left,
right, left," until perfect uniformity was attained, and the
disciplined force marched steadily on to College Green, following the
triumphal chariot with alternate verses of "God Save the Queen" and
"Rule Britannia," each verse interpolated with great bursts of
applause. At Trinity College the glare of torches appeared, and
simultaneously an organised attempt at groaning boomed in under the
cheering. Heedless of the rabble the column marched merrily on, not
with the broken rush of an English mob, but with the irresistible
force of unity in a concrete mass, with the multitudinous tramp of an
army division. The yelling slummers hovered on each flank, frantic
with impotent rage; willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, knowing
that to themselves open conflict meant annihilation. A savage,
unsavoury horde of rat-like ruffians, these same allies of Mr.
Gladstone and Mr. Morley, a peculiarly repulsive residuum these Dublin
off-scourings. They screamed "To hell with Balfour," "To hell with the
English," "To hell with your Unionists," "To hell with Queen
Victoria." Some of them sang a doggerel, beginning:--
Let the English remember,
We'll make them surrender,
And chase them to their boats,
And cut their ---- throats,
And make a big flood
Of their bad black blood--
not precisely a poem to herald the famous "Union of hearts" so
confidently expected. The Unionists tramped on cheering triumphantly,
rejoicing in their strength, ignoring the taunting and jeering of the
Parnellite scum as beneath contempt. An old Home Ruler expressed
disapprobation of his party. "What's the use of showing your teeth
when you can't bite?" he said. "Wait till we get the bill and then we
will show them and the English what we can do."
On through Grafton Street, Nassau Street, and into Dawson Street,
always with great shouting and singing of "God Save the Queen," and
"Rule Britannia," the torches still glaring in front. At Morrisson's
Hotel, where Parnell was arrested, a man shouted "Three cheers for
Gladstone," but nobody responded. The rabble may use him, but they
refused a single shout. On the other hand groans were given with
leonine force both for Morley and his master. Arrived at St. Stephen's
Green, the procession halted at Lord Iveagh's residence, and Mr.
Balfour came on the balcony, receiving a welcome right royal. He made
another speech amid cheering and groaning of tremendous energy, making
himself tolerably well heard under abnormal conditions. When he said
"This day shall never fade from my recollection," the lamp beside him
was removed and all was over. Back tramped the column, with its clouds
of camp-followers, on the way cheering and sending to hell the member
for South Tyrone, with other prominent politicians who live on the
line of march. The students held their sticks aloft, striking them
together in time to their singing. A shindy had been predicted on the
return to College Green, and little groups of Scots Greys and Gordon
Highlanders, the latter in their white uniforms, lounged about smoking
their pipes in happy expectation, but beyond cheering at the statue of
Orange William in Dame Street, nothing whatever occurred, and
presently the crowd began to disperse. Seeing this, the police, who
until now had been massed in strong force broke up into units, and
moving leisurely about said, "Good night, boys; you have had enough
fun for one day. Get to bed, all of you." Then the young men who had
composed the great loyalist column left the square in little bands,
each singing "God save the Queen," and every man feeling that he had
deserved well of his country. The bill may be stone dead, but there is
a satisfaction in the act of shovelling earth on the corpse.
Dublin, April 8th.
No. 7.--BAD FOR ENGLAND, RUINOUS TO IRELAND.
Home Rule for Ireland means damage and loss to English working men.
During the late general election the working men candidates of
Birmingham, and of England generally, argued that once Ireland were
granted Home Rule the distressful land would immediately become a
Garden of Eden, a sort of Hibernian El-Dorado; that the poverty which
drove Irishmen from their native shores would at once and for ever
cease and determine, and that thenceforth--and here was the
bribe--Irishmen would cease to compete with the overcrowded artisans
and labourers of England. That these statements are diametrically
opposed to the truth is well known to all persons of moderate
intelligence, and the personal statement of several great capitalists
with reference to their course of action in the event of Home Rule
becoming law tends to show that multitudes of the industrious classes
of Irish manufacturing towns will at once be thrown out of employment,
and must of necessity flock to England, increasing the congestion of
its great cities, competing with English labour, and inevitably
lowering the rate of wages. Hear what comfortable words Mr. Robert
Worthington can speak.