a little oasis of trees and flowers, with a clear winding trout-stream
running all about it. The streets are wide, the houses well-built, the
pavements kerbed and in good condition. Trees are bigger and more
numerous than usual, and the place has a generally bowery appearance
such as is uncommon in Ireland, which is not famous for its timber.
Trees are in many parts the grand desideratum, the one thing needful
to perfect the beauty of the scenery, but Ireland as compared with
England, France, Holland, Belgium, or Germany may almost be called a
treeless country. Strange to say, the Home Rule Bill, which affects
everything, threatens to deprive the country of its few remaining
trees. A Scotsman resident thirteen years in Ireland said to me:--
"The timber you see lying there is not American, but Irish. The people
who have timber are in many cases cutting it down, because they
foresee a state of general insecurity and depression, and they need
all the cash they can command. But there is another reason for the
deforesting of the country, which is--that if Home Rule becomes law,
the landowners are disposed to believe that no allowance will be made
for the timber which may be on the land when the land is sold to the
tenant under some unknown Act to be passed at some future day." This
fits into the point raised by a tenant farmer living just outside the
town, an extraordinary character said to rise at seven o'clock in the
morning. He said:--
"They say the farmer is to get the land--but what then? Somebody must
own the land, and whoever has it will be reckoned a bloody tyrant.
Won't the owner be a landlord? No, say they, no more landlords at all,
at all. But isn't that nonsense, says I? If ye split up the land into
patches as big as yer hand and give every man a patch, wouldn't some
men have twenty or a hundred, or maybe a thousand patches in five
years? An' thin, thim that was lazy an' wasteful an' got out o' their
land would be for shootin' the savin', sthrivin' man that worked his
way up by buying out the drones. For wouldn't he be a landlord the
moment he stopped workin' all the land himself. An' that would be sure
to happen at wanst. Lord Gough is landlord here, an' ye'll not better
him in Ireland. Look at the town there--all built of stone an' paved,
wid a fine public well in the square, an' a weigh-house, an' the
groves of lilac an' laburnums all out in flower an' dippin' in the
wather; where ye may catch mighty fine trout out iv yer bedroom
window, bedad ye may, or out of yer kitchin, an' draw them out iv the
wather an' dhrop thim in' the fryin' pan off the hook with the bait in
their mouths, an' their tails waggin', finishing their brakefasts
thimselves while they get yours ready! Throth ye can. None iv us that
has any sinse belaves in Home Rule. 'Tis only the ignorant that'll
belave anything. No, we're quiet hereabouts, never shot anybody, an'
not likely to. Yes, the Protestant Church is iligant enough, but
there's very few Protestants hereabouts. It's the gentry an' most
respectable folks that's Protestants. Protestants gets on because they
kape their shops cleaner, an' has more taste, an' we'd sooner belave
thim an' thrust thim that they'd kape their word an' not chate ye,
than our own people. Yes, 'tis indeed quare, but it's thrue. The very
priests won't deny it. An' another thing they wouldn't deny. The
murtherin', sweatin' landlords that'll grind the very soul out of
ye--who are they? Tell me now. Just the small men that have got up out
of the muck. 'Tisn't the gintry at all. The gintry will wait a year,
three years, five years, seven years for rint. The man that bought his
farm or two wid borrowed money won't wait a day. 'Out ye go, an'
bloody end to ye,' says he. Ye don't hear of thim evictions. The man
that sint it to the paper would get bate--or worse.
"An' some of the little houldhers says, 'Pat,' says they, 'what'll we
do wid the money whin we've no taxes to pay?' 'Tis what they're tould,
the crathurs. God help them, but they're mighty ignorant."
Those who ridicule the assertions of Protestants and Catholic
Unionists with reference to the lack of liberty may explain away what
was told me by Mr. J.B. Barrington, brother of Sir Charles Barrington,
a name of might in Mid-Ireland. He said, "Someone in our neighbourhood
went about getting signatures to a petition against the Home Rule
Bill. Among others who signed it was Captain Croker's carpenter, who
since then has been waylaid and severely beaten. Another case
occurring in the same district was even harder. A poor fellow has
undergone a very severe thrashing with sticks for having signed the
bill when, as a matter of fact, he had refused to sign it! Wasn't that
hard lines? Both these men know their assailants, but they will not
tell. They think it better to bear those ills they have than fly to
others that they know not of. They are quite right, for, as it is,
they know the end of the matter. Punish the beaters, and the relations
of the convicted men would take up the cause, and if they could not
come on the principal, if he had removed, or was awkward to get at,
they would pass it on to his relations. So that a man's rebelling
against the village ruffians may involve his dearest friends in
trouble, may subject them to ill-usage or boycotting. A man might
fight it out if he only had himself to consider; but you see where the
shoe pinches."
A decent man in Ennis thus expressed himself anent the Bodyke affair.
(My friend is a Catholic Nationalist.) "The Bodyke men are not all out
so badly off as they seem. But their acts are bad, for they can pay,
and they will not. No, I do not call the Colonel a bad landlord. We
know all about it in Ennis; everybody agrees, too. The farmers meet in
this town and elsewhere. Two or three of the best talkers lead the
meeting, and everything is done _their_ way. The more decent, sensible
men are not always the best talkers. Look at Gladstone, have ye
anybody to come up to him? An' look at his character--one way to-day
an' another way to-morrow, an' the divil himself wouldn't say what the
day afther that. But often the most decent, sensible men among these
farmers can't express themselves, an they get put down. An' all are
bound by the resolutions passed. None must pay rent till they get
leave from all. What would happen a man who would pay rent on the
Bodyke estate? He might order his coffin an' the crape for his
berryin, an' dig his own grave to save his widow the expense. Perhaps
ye have Gladstonian life-assurance offices in England? What praymium
would they want for the life of a Bodyke man that paid his rint to the
Colonel?"
The "praymium" would doubtless be "steep." Boycotting is hard to bear,
as testified by Mr. Dawson, a certain Clerk of Petty Sessions. He
said:--"The Darcy family took a small farm from which a man had been
evicted after having paid no rent for seven years. The land lay waste
for five years, absolutely derelict, before the Darcys took it in
hand. They were boycotted. Their own relations dare not speak to them
lest they, too, should be included in the curse. A member of the Darcy
family died.
"Then came severe inconveniences. Friends had secretly conveyed
provisions to the Darcys, and, at considerable risk to themselves, had
afforded some slight countenance and assistance. But a dead body, that
was a terrible affair. No coffin could be had in the whole district,
and someone went thirty miles and got one at the county town by means
of artful stratagem. Then came the funeral. It was to take place at
twelve one day, but we found there would be a demonstration, and
nobody knew what might happen. The corpse, that of a woman, might have
been dragged from the coffin and thrown naked on the street. In the
dead of night a young fellow went round the friends, and we buried the
poor lady at four in the morning."
The laziness of the Irish people was here exploited with advantage. A
great French chief of police, who had made elaborate dispositions to
meet a popular uprising, once said, "Send the police home and the
military to their barracks. There will be no Revolution this evening
on account of the rain." A very slight shower keeps an Irishman from
work, and you need not rise very early to get over him. A police
officer at Gort said to me, "The people are quiet hereabouts, but I
couldn't make you understand their ignorance. They do just what the
priest tells them in every mortal thing. They believe that unless they
obey they will go to Hell and endure endless torture for ever. They
believe that unless they vote as they are told they will be damned to
all eternity. But oh! if you could see their laziness. They lie abed
half the day, and spend most of the rest in minding other people's
business. Before you had been in the town half-an-hour every soul in
the place was discussing you. They thought you had a very suspicious
appearance, like an agent or a detective or something. Laziness and
ignorance, laziness and ignorance, that's what's the matter with
Ireland."
The farmers of this truly rural district distinctly state that they do
not want Home Rule. They only want the land, and nearly all are
furnished with Tim Healy's statement that "The farmer who bought his
own land to-day would, when a Home Rule Parliament was won, be very
sorry that he was in such a hurry." Just as the men of Bodyke are
getting the rifles for which Mr. Davitt wished in order to chastise
the Royal Irish Constabulary, by way of showing these "ruffians, the
armed mercenaries of England, that the people of Ireland had not lost
the spirit of their ancestors." Well may a timid Protestant of Gort
say, "These men are deceiving England. They only want to get power,
and then they will come out in their true colours. All is quiet here
now, but the strength of the undercurrent is something tremendous. The
English Home Rulers may pooh-pooh our fears, but they know nothing
about it. And, besides, _they_ are quite safe. That makes all the
difference. The change will not drive them from all they hold dear. I
do not agree with the nonsense about cutting our throats in our beds.
That speech is an English invention to cast ridicule on us. But we
shall have to clear out of this. Life will be unendurable with an
Irish Parliament returned by priests. For it _will_ be returned by
priests. Surely the Gladstonian English admit that? To speak of
loyalty to England in connection with an Irish Parliament is too
absurd. Did not the Clan-na-Gael circular say that while its objects
lay far beyond anything that might openly be named, the National
Parliament must be first attained by whatever means? Then it went on
to say that Ireland would be able to command the working plant of an
armed revolution. Do you not know that the Irish Army of Independence
is already being organised? What do you suppose the men who join it
think it means? Did not Arthur O'Connor say that when England was
involved in war, that would be the time? Did he not say that 100,000
men were already prepared, and that at three days' notice Ireland
could possess double that number, all willing to fight England for
love, and without any pay? If the English Home Rulers lived in Galway
they would remember these things as I do. _You think the Bill can
never become law. If you could assure me of that, I would be a happy
man this night._ I would go to my pillow more contented than I have
been for years. _I and my family would go on our knees and thank God
from our hearts._"
Mr. Wakely, of Mount Shannon Daly, said:--"I live in one of the
wildest parts of Galway, but all went on well with us until this Home
Rule Bill upset the country. Now I am completely unsettled. Whether to
plant the land or let it lie waste, I cannot tell. I might not be able
to reap the harvest. Whether to buy stock to raise and fatten, or
whether to keep what cash we have with a view to a sudden pack-up and
exit, we do not know. And I think we are not the only timid folks, for
the other day I took a horse twenty-four miles to a fair where I made
sure of selling him easily. I had to take him back the twenty-four
miles, having wasted my trouble and best part of two days. The
franchise is too low, that is what ruined the country."
Another desponding Galwegian found fault with the Liberal party of
1884. He said, "They were actuated by so much philanthropy. Their
motto was "Trust the people." We know what was their object well
enough, They let in the flood of Irish democracy. The Radicals got
forty, but the Nationalists gained sixty, and then part of the
Radicals--the steady, sensible party among them--ran out a breakwater
to prevent both countries being swamped. A break-water is a good
thing, but there was no necessity for the flood. They cannot
altogether repair the damage they have done. Look at the Irish members
of twenty years ago, and look at them now. Formerly they were
gentlemen. What are they to-day? A pack of blackguards. Their own
supporters shrink from entrusting them with the smallest shred of
power. Mr. Gladstone must be as mad as a March hare. The idea of a
Dublin Parliament engineered by men whom their own supporters look
upon as rowdies would be amusing but for the seriousness of the
consequences. Have you been in Ennis? Did you see the great memorial
to the Manchester murderers--'Martyrs' they call them? Their lives
were taken away for love of their country, and their last breath was
God save Ireland! That's the inscription, and what does it mean?
Loyalty to England? Would such a thing be permitted on the Continent?
Why, any sensible Government would stamp out such an innuendo as open
rebellion. It teaches the children hatred of England, and they are fed
with lies from their very cradle. Every misfortune--the dirt, the
rags, the poverty of the country, are all to be attributed to English
rule. Take away that and the people believe they will live in laziness
combined with luxury."
The lying of the Home Rulers is indeed unscrupulous. An Irish
newspaper of to-day's date, speaking of the opening of the Chicago
Exposition, says that "it is fitting to remember that our countrymen
have in the United States found an asylum and an opportunity which
they have never found at home, that there they have been allowed
untrammelled to worship God as they thought right," clearly implying
that in Ireland or in England they have no such liberty. A car driver
of Limerick, one Hynes, a total abstainer, and a person of some
intelligence, firmly believed that England prevented Ireland from
mining for coal, which disability, with the resulting poverty, would
disappear with the granting of Home Rule. Everywhere this patent
obliqueness and absurd unreason. A fiery Nationalist in white heat of
debate shook his fist at an Ulsterman, and said, "When we get the
bill, you'll not be allowed to have all the manufactories to
yourselves," an extraordinary outburst which requires no comment. This
burning patriot looked around and said, with the air of a man who is
posing his adversary, "Why should they have all the big works in one
corner of the island?" In opposition to the melancholy carman was the
dictum of Mr. Gallagher, the great high-priest of Kennedy's tobaccos.
He said--
"The poverty of Ireland is due to the fact that she has no coal.
Geologists say that tens of thousands of years ago a great ice-drift
carried away all the coal-depositing strata."
"Another injustice to Ireland," interrupted a sacrilegious Unionist.
"And doubtless due to the baleful machinations of the Base and Bloody
Balfour," said another.
It is easy to bear other people's troubles. He jests at scars who
never felt a wound. That the Irish nation has untold wrongs to bear is
evidenced by a Southern Irish paper, which excitedly narrates the
injuries heaped on the holy head of Hibernia by the scoffing Yankee,
the wrongful possessor of the American soil. A meeting of
distinguished Irish emigrants, who have from time to time favoured
the States with their notice, was recently convened in New York, not
on this exceptional occasion to metaphorically devour the succulent
Saxon, nor to send his enemies a dollar for bread, and ten dollars for
lead, nor yet to urge the Gotham nurses and scullerymaids to further
contributions in favour of patriot Parliamentarians, but to protest
with all the fervour of the conveners' souls, with all the eloquence
of their powerful intellects, with all the solemnity of a sacred deed,
against the irreverent naming of the animals in the Central Park
Zoological Gardens after Irish ladies, Irish gentlemen, Irish saints.
Misther Daniel O'Shea, of County Kerry, stated that the great
hippotamus had actually been named Miss Murphy! A hijeous baste from a
dissolute counthry inhabited wid black nagurs, to be named after an
Oirish gyurl! Mr. O'Shea uncorked the vials of his wrath, and poured
out his anger with a bubble, the meeting palpitating with hair-raising
horror. Some other animal was called Miss Bridget. And Bridget was the
name iv an Oirish saint! This must be shtopped. Mr. O'Shea declared he
would rather die than allow it to continue. No further particulars are
given, but it is understood that the viper had been christened "Tim
Healy," the rattlesnake "O'Brien," the laughing hyaena John Dillon, and
so on. The Chairman wanted to know why the Yankees did not call the
ugly brutes after Lord Salisbury and Colonel Saunderson? Nobody seemed
to know, so eight remonstrants were appointed a committee of inquiry.
Mr. O'Shea also denounced the American people as unlawfully holding a
country which properly belonged to the Irish, an Irish saint, St.
Brengan, having discovered the New World in the _sixteenth_ century!
Enough of Ireland's wrongs; there is no end to them. As one of her
poets sings, "The cup of her bitterness long has overflowed, And still
it is not full."
The great bulk of the intelligent people of Ireland regard Home Rule
with dread, and this feeling grows ever deeper and stronger. The
country is at present exploited by adventurers, paid by the enemies of
England, themselves animated by racial and religious prejudices,
willing to serve their paymasters and deserve their pay rather by
damaging England than by benefiting Ireland, for whose interests they
care not one straw. Ignorance manipulated by charlatanism and bigotry
is, in these latter days, the determining factor in the destinies of
the British Empire. Intelligence is dominated by terrorism, by threats
of death, of ill-usage, of boycotting--the latter I am told an outcome
of an old engine of the Roman Catholic Church, improved and brought up
to date. Humphreys, of Tipperary, may know if this is true. It was
from one of the "Father's" feculent family, in the heart of his own
putrescent parish, that I heard of the local chemist who dare not
supply medicine urgently needed by a boycotted person, who was
suspected of entertaining what the learned Humphreys would spell as
"Brittish" sympathies.
Gort (Co. Galway), May 6th.
No. 19.--INDOLENCE AND IMPROVIDENCE.
Mr. James Dunne, of Athenry, is an acute observer and a shrewd
political controversialist. He said: "The people about here, the poor
folks such as the small farmers and labourers, have really no opinion
at all. They know nothing of Home Rule, one way or the other. If they
say anything, it is to the effect that they will obtain some advantage
in connection with the land. Beyond that they care nothing for the
matter. Not one has any sentiment to be gratified. They only want to
live, if possible, a bit more easily. If they can get the land for
nothing or even more cheaply, then Home Rule is good. They can see no
further than their noses, and they cannot be expected to follow a long
chain of argument. They believe just what they are told. Yes, they go
to the priest for advice under all circumstances. They ask him to name
the man for whom they are to vote, or rather they would ask him if he
waited long enough. They vote as they are told; and as the Catholic
priest believes that the Catholic religion is the most important thing
in the world, which from his point of view is quite proper and right,
he naturally influences his people in the direction which is most
likely to propagate the true faith, and give to it the predominance
which he believes to be its rightful due.
"The people round here are harmless, and will continue so, unless the
agitators get hold of them. They are ignorant, and easily led, and an
influential speaker who knew their simplicity could make them do
anything, no matter what. No, I couldn't say that they are
industrious. They do not work hard. They just go along, go along,
like. They have no enterprise at all, and you couldn't get them out of
the ways of their fathers. They'd think it a positive sin.
"Look at the present fine weather. This is a very early season. No
living man has seen such a spring-time in Ireland. Two months of fine
warm weather, the ground in fine working condition, everything six
weeks before last year. Not a man that started to dig a day earlier.
No, the old time will be adhered to just as if it was cold and wet and
freezing. You could not stir them with an electric battery. They moon,
moon, moon along, in the old, old, old way, waiting for somebody to
come and do something for them.
"If they had the land for nothing they would be no better off. They
would just do that much less work. They live from hand to mouth. They
have no ambition. The same thing that did for their fathers will do
for them, the same dirtiness, the same inconvenience. If their father
went three miles round a stone wall to get in at a gate they'll do it
too. Never would they think of making another gate. They turn round
angrily and say, 'Wasn't it good enough for my father, an' wasn't he a
betther man than ayther me or you?' If you lived here, you would at
first begin to show them things, but when you saw how much better
they like their own way you'd stop it. You'd very soon get your heart
broke. You couldn't stir them an inch in a thousand years. What will
Home Rule do for them? Nobody knows but Gladstone and the Divil."
A bystander said: "Down at Galway there was a man wid a donkey goin'
about sellin' fish, which was carried in two panniers. Whin he had
only enough to fill one pannier, he put a load o' stones into the
other pannier to balance the fish an' make the panniers stick on, an'
ride aisier.
"Well, one day an Englishman that had been watchin' Barney for some
time comes up to him an' he says, says he--
"'Whin ye have only fish for one pannier why do ye fill up the other
wid stones off the beach?' says he.
"'Sure, 'tis to balance it,' says Barney, mighty surprised an' laffin
widin himself at the Englishman's ignorance. 'Sure,' says Barney, 'ye
wouldn't have a cock-eyed load on the baste, all swingin' on one side,
like a pig wid one ear, would ye?' says he.
"But this Englishman was one of thim stiff sort that doesn't know whin
he's bate, an' he went on arguin'. Says he--
"'But couldn't you put the half of the fish in one pannier, and the
other half in the other pannier, instead of putting all the fish in
one, and filling up the other with stones?' says he. 'Wouldn't that
balance the load?' says he. 'And wouldn't that be only half the load
for the poor baste?' says he. An' Barney sthruggled a bit till he got
a fair grip iv it, d'ye see, but by the sivin pipers that played
before Moses, he couldn't see the way to answer this big word of the
Englishman; so he says, says he, 'Musha, 'twas me father's way, rest
his sowl,' says he. 'An' would I be settin' meself up to be bettherin'
his larnin'?' says he. 'Not one o' me would show him sich impidence
and disrespect,' says he. 'An' I'll carry the rocks till I die, glory
be to God,' says he.
"Now what could ye do with the like iv _him_?"