a certain Catholic church which I regularly attend, and on a Sunday
when were present two or three eminent Judges, with a considerable
number of the Dublin aristocracy, a certain dignitary, whom I also
will not name before our Sassenach friend, actually coupled the names
of honest people who had died in their beds with the names of Curley
and the other assassins who were hanged for the Phoenix Park murders.
We were invited to pray for their souls _en bloc_! And this, mind you,
not at the time of the execution, but a year afterwards, on the
anniversary of the day, and when the thing might well have been
allowed to drop. Did you ever hear of anything more outrageous than
the conduct of this priest, who took upon himself to mention these
brutal murderers in the same breath with the blessed departed, whose
friends and relations were kneeling around? The fact that this cleric
could so act shows the immunity of the Irish priesthood, and their
confidence in their influence over the people. Don't forget that this
was in the capital of Ireland, and that the congregation was
aristocratic. How great must be priestly influence over the unlettered
peasantry. You see my point? What would the English say to such an
exhibition? What would the relatives of decent people in England do
if they had been submitted to such an insult by a Protestant parson?"
I disclaimed any right to speak for the brutal Saxon with any degree
of authority, but ventured to say that to the best of my knowledge and
belief the supposititious reverend gentleman, when next he took his
walks abroad, might possibly become acquainted with a novel but
vigorous method of propulsion, or even might undergo the process so
familiar to Tim Healy, not altogether unconnected with a horsewhip.
The Galway Town Commissioner said:--"We respectable Catholics are in a
very awkward position. We have to live among our countrymen who are of
a different way of thinking, and unhappily we cannot express our
honest opinions without embarassing consequences. In England, where
people of opposite politics meet on terms of most sincere friendship,
you do not understand our difficulties. We are denounced as
unpatriotic, as enemies to our native land, and as aiders and abettors
of the hated English rule. Now we know very well--my friend from
Dublin, who understands law, will bear me out--we know very well that
the English laws are good, excellent, liberal. We know that the
English people are anxious to do what is fair and right, and that they
have long been doing their best to make us comfortable. But we must
keep this knowledge to ourselves, for such of us who are in business
would run great risk of loss, besides social ostracism, if we ventured
to boldly express our views. Moreover, we do not care to put ourselves
in open conflict with the clergy, upon whom we have been taught to
look from earliest childhood with reverence and awe. It is almost, if
not quite, a matter of heredity. I declare that, in spite of what I
might call my intellectual convictions, I am to some extent overawed
by any illiterate farmer's son, who has been ordained a priest. I feel
it in my blood. I must have imbibed it with my mother's milk. No use
for Conservative Catholics to kick against it. We are too few, and we
are bound hand and foot."
So did the Galway man deliver himself. I was reminded of Mr. O'Ryan,
of Larne, a devoted Catholic, who said, "I protest from my innermost
heart against Home Rule. I protest not only for myself, but also on
behalf of my co-religionists that dare not speak, because if they did
speak their lives might not be worth an hour's purchase, not being
situated, as I am, in the midst of a loyal, and law-abiding
population. I believe that all that Ireland requires is a just
settlement of the land question, and a fair, reasonable measure of
local self-government. For several generations past England has been
doing all the good she could for Ireland, and none have more reason
than the Roman Catholics of Ireland to be thankful for that good. The
loyal Roman Catholics of Ireland are convinced that Home Rule would be
the ruin of Ireland in particular and of the British Empire in
general, which would find itself deprived in a few hours of a
Constitution the workmanship of centuries, and the admiration of the
whole nineteenth-century civilisation."
This is tolerably outspoken for an Irish Roman Catholic, but Mr.
O'Ryan lives in Ulster, where people do not shoot their neighbours for
difference of political opinion. He said more: "We loyal Catholics
could never submit to Mr. Gladstone's ticket-of-leave men placed in
power over us in this country, and rather than submit to them we are
prepared for the worst, and ready, if need be, to die with the words,
'No surrender,' on our lips."
Archbishop Walsh cursed the Dublin Bazaar for the Irish Masonic
Orphanage until he was black in the face, but neither he nor any other
Catholic Bishop denounced the perpetrators of outrage, of mutilation,
of foul assassinations. When Inspector Martin was butchered on the
steps of the presbytery at Gweedore; when Joseph Huddy and John Huddy
were murdered and their bodies put in sacks and thrown into Lough
Mask; when Mrs. Croughan, of Mullingar, was murdered because she had
been seen speaking to the police, four shots being fired into her
body; when Luke Dillon, a poor peasant, was shot dead as he walked
home from work; when Patrick Halloran, a poor herdsman, was shot dead
at his own fireside; when Michael Moloney was murdered for paying his
rent; when John Lennane, an old man who had accepted work from a
boycotted farmer, was shot dead in the midst of his family; when
Thomas Abram met precisely the same fate under similar circumstances;
when Constable Kavanagh was murdered; when John Dillon had his brains
beaten out and his ears torn away; when Patrick Freely was murdered
for paying his rent; when John Curtin was shot dead by moonlighters,
to whom he refused to give up his guns; when John Forhan, a feeble old
man of nearly seventy years, was murdered for having induced labourers
to work on a boycotted farm; when James Ruane, a labourer who worked
for a boycotted farmer, was murdered by three shots; when James Quinn
was wounded by a bullet, and while disabled, killed by having his
throat cut; when Peter McCarthy was murdered because it was thought he
meant to pay rent; when James Fitzmaurice, aged seventy, was shot dead
in the presence of his daughter Norah, because he had taken a farm
which his brother had left, the latter declining to pay rent, although
the landlord offered a reduction of 66 per cent.; when Margaret
Macmahon, widow, and her little children were three times fired at
because the poor woman had earned a few pence by supplying turf to the
police; when Patrick Quirke, aged seventy-five, was murdered for
taking a farm which somebody else wanted; when the wife of John
Collins was indecently assaulted while her husband was being brutally
beaten for caretaking; when John Curtin (another John Curtin), a
school-master, was shot, and his wife received forty-two slugs in her
face, neck, and breast for something they had not done, the school
also being fired into, and all children attending it boycotted; when
John Connor's wife was shot in the head by moonlighters who wished to
vex the husband; when Cornelius Murphy was shot dead while sitting at
his "ain fireside" chatting with his wife and children; when Daniel
O'Brien, aged seventy-five, talking with his wife, aged seventy, was
murdered by a shot; when Patrick Quigley had the roof of his skull
blown away for taking some grazing; when David Barry was shot in the
main street of Castleisland; when Patrick Taugney was murdered in the
presence of his wife and daughters; when Edmund Allen was shot dead
because of a right-of-way dispute--he was a Protestant; when young
Cashman, aged twenty, was beaten to death for speaking to a policeman;
when poor Spillane was murdered for acting as a caretaker; when
Patrick Curtin, John Rahen, and a farmer named Tonery were murdered;
when James Spence, aged sixty-five, was beaten to death; when Blake,
Ruane, Linton, Burke, Wallace, Dempsey, Timothy Sullivan, John Moylan,
James Sheridan, and Constable Cox were shot dead; when James Miller,
Michael Ball, Peter Greany, and Bridget McCullagh were murdered--the
last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when Ryan
Foley was brutally murdered; when Michael Baylan was murdered; when
Viscount Mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road,
the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the
shelter of a barn; when a car-driver named John Downey was killed by a
bullet intended for Mr. Hutchins, J.P.; when young Wheeler, of Oolagh,
whence I dated a letter, was shot dead, to punish his father, who was
an agent--when all these murders took place, every one of them, and as
many more, the work of the Land League, which also was responsible for
more outrages, filthy indecencies, and gross brutalities than the
entire _Gazette_ would hold, and which would in many cases be unfit
for publication--then were the clergy SILENT. No denunciations from
the altar; no influence exerted in the parish. In many cases a direct
encouragement to persevere in the good path. When John Curtin's
daughters attended church after their father's murder they were
attacked by a hostile crowd. The police were compelled to charge the
infuriated mob. Otherwise the pious Papists would in all probability
have consummated the good work by murdering the remainder of the
family, after having, in the presence of daughters who nobly fought
the murderers, assassinated the father.
What did the good priest, Father O'Connor, say to all this; how
express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious
savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege?
He "took no notice of the occurrence"--good, easy man. But I am
forgetting something. Mr. Curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters,
who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children,
asked for the father's arms. Before the terrified boys and girls could
comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks.
The rest fled precipitately, but unhappily Curtin gave chase and was
killed. Good Father O'Connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter,
who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of Mr.
Curtin, who did!
The Catholic Bishops of Ireland stood by and looked on all this
without a word of censure. Silence gives consent. Had they fulminated
against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for
nearly all those I have cited were of this class; had they used their
immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in
many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life
to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no
man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the
law--had the Bishops done this, even the dull and sluggish brain of
the brutal Saxon could have understood their action. They uttered no
single word of condemnation. An eminent Catholic, a clever
professional man, who reveres the faith in which he was bred, but
holds its priesthood in lowest contempt, said to me:--"You cannot find
a word of condemnation uttered by any Bishop during the whole period
when brutal murders were of daily occurrence. I give you your best. I
would stake anything on my statement. I have challenged people over
and over again, but nobody has ever been able to produce a syllable of
censure, of warning, of reprobation. The Bishops were strangely
unanimous in their silence."
But when the Irish Masons try to provide for the orphans of their
brethren the Archbishop's back is up at once; for Masons have secrets
which they may not tell even to priests; and therefore Dr. Walsh
declares that whosoever gives sixpence to this cause of charity, or
associates with its promoters, shall be cast into hell, there to abide
in torture everlastingly--unless previously whitewashed by himself in
person. And as I have clearly shown, the influence of Archbishop Walsh
and his kind is at this moment supremely powerful in matters affecting
the prestige and integrity of England and her people. Wherefore I do
not wonder at the saying of an earnest Irishman of famous name, a
baronet of long descent, whom I saw yesterday--
"When I see how the thing is being worked, and when, as a Catholic, I
recognise the progress and character of the Church policy, and when I
see England walking so stupidly into the trap, I don't know what to
do--whether to swear, or to go out and be sick."
Moycullen (Connemara), May 23rd.
No. 26.--THE CONNEMARA RAILWAY.
Mr. Balfour's railway from Galway to Clifden will be exactly fifty
miles long, and will run through Crooniffe, Moycullen, Ross,
Oughterard, and the wildest and most desolate parts of Connemara. The
line has been in contemplation for thirty years at least, but the
strong suit of its Irish projectors was talking, not doing, and the
project might have remained under discussion until the crack of doom
but for Mr. Balfour's energy and administrative power. The Irish
patriots had no money, or they would not invest any. The Galway
authorities would not authorise a county rate. Anybody who chose might
make the line, but the local "powers that be" refused to spend a
single penny on an enterprise which would for years provide employment
for the starving people of Connemara, and would afterwards prove of
incalculable benefit to the whole West of Ireland by opening up an
attractive, an immense, an almost inaccessible tourist district,
besides affording facilities of transit for agricultural stock and
general market produce, and powerfully aiding the rapidly-developing
fish trade of the western sea-board. Not a bit of it. The Western
Irish are always standing about waiting for something. They talked
about the line for a generation or two, but they cut no sod of turf.
They harangued meetings convened to hear the prospective blessings of
the line, but they declined to put any money on their opinions. The
starving peasants of Connemara might have turned cannibals and eaten
each other before Irishmen had commenced the railway. The people of
the congested districts were unable to live on the sympathy of their
fellow-countrymen, and nothing else was offered to them. The
Connemarans have an occasional weakness for food. They like a square
feed now and again. Their instincts are somewhat material. They think
that Pity without Relief is like Mustard without Beef. They like
Sentiment--with something substantial at the back of it. Their
patriot-brethren, those warm-hearted, dashing, off-hand,
devil-may-care heroes of whom we read in Charles Lever, sometimes
visited the district, to rouse the people against the brutal Saxon,
but they did no more than this. Sometimes, I say, not often, did the
patriots patrol Connemara. There were two reasons for this. First, the
Irish patriots do not speak their native language; and the Connemarans
are not at home with English. Secondly, and principally, the
Connemarans had nothing to give away. They cannot pay for first-class
patriotism like that of Davitt, Dillon, O'Brien, and Tim Healy, who
latterly have never performed out of London.
And so the Galway folks went on with their railway discussions, and
the poor Connemarans went on with their starving. Suddenly Mr. Balfour
took the thing up, and the turf began to fly. The Midland and Western
Railway Company, in consideration of a grant of L264,000, agreed to
make the line, and to afterwards run it, whether it paid or not. The
contractors were not allowed to import unskilled labour. The
Connemarans were to make the line whether they knew the work or not.
They had never seen navvy labour. They knew nothing outside the
management of small farms. They had never done regular work. Their
usual form is to plant their bit of ground and then to sit down till
the crops come up, on which they live till next season. A failure of
crops means starvation. This was their normal condition. They enjoyed
what Mr. Gladstone would call a "chronic plethora" of hunger. The
liverish tourist who adventured himself into these barbarous regions
in hopeless quest of appetite for his breakfast, would see the
Connemarans in hopeless quest of breakfast for their appetites. The
region is healthy enough. As Justice Shallow would say, "Beggars all,
beggars all. Marry, good air."
The first thing you see is a twenty-thousand-pound bridge across the
Corrib, not very far from the salmon weir, where are more fish than
you can count splashing up the salmon stairs, which are arranged to
save the salmon the effort of a long jump. Then the line running along
the Corrib Valley on a high embankment, past the ruins of what was
first a convent, then a whiskey distillery, now a timekeeper's office.
An entire field is being dug up and carted away, the soil being
excavated to a depth of eight or ten feet, over an area of several
acres required for sidings and railway buildings. A strolling Galway
man of Home Rule tendencies imparts information. He is eminently
discontented, and thinks the way in which the work is conducted
another injustice to Ireland. "The people are working and getting
wages, but what wages! Thirteen and sixpence a week! Would English
navvies work for that? You are getting the labour at starvation
prices, and even then you bully the men. They work in gangs, each with
a ganger swearing at them in the most offensive and outrageous way.
See that gang over there. You can hear the ganger shouting and
swearing even at this distance. The poor men are treated like dogs,
and even then they can hardly keep body and soul together. They have
to come miles and miles to the work, and some live so far away that
they can only return home once a week. So they have to camp out in
hovels. You are going down the line? Then you will be shocked at the
slave-driving you'll see. It reminds me of Legree in 'Uncle Tom's
Cabin.' I am surprised that the men do not drop dead over the work.
Not a moment's rest or relaxation. Work, work, work from morning to
night, for next to nothing. It ought not to be allowed in a civilised
country. And on the top of all this slavery we are expected to be very
much obliged for the opportunity of working at all. You chuck us a
crust just as you would chuck a bone to a dog, and then you want us to
go down on our knees and pour blessings on Balfour's head. We're tired
of such stuff; but, thank God, we shall soon have things in our own
hands. All these men are small farmers, or small farmers' sons. They
can't get a living out of the land, and they are obliged to come to
this. Bullied and driven from week's end to week's end, they are the
very picture of starvation. A shame and disgrace to the English
Government."
I may as well say at once that all this proved to be untrue. No doubt
the Galway Home Rulers invent and circulate these falsehoods to
discount the effect of the good work of a Conservative Government, and
it is, therefore, well that the facts should be placed on record. I
pushed on to a cutting where fifty men were busily engaged in loading
earth into trucks, having first dug it from a great bank of gravelly
soil. An Irish ganger walked to and fro along the top, keeping his eye
on the men, and occasionally shouting in an excited tone. But he was
not swearing at, or otherwise abusing, the men, who were as fine a
company of peasants as you could see anywhere, well-built, well-grown,
and muscular. Not a trace of starvation, but, on the contrary, a
well-fed, well-nourished look. The ganger, Sullivan, seemed
good-tempered enough, only shouting to let off his superfluous
vitality. He used no bad language. "Cheer up, my lads," he cried. "In
wid the dirt. Look alive, look alive, look alive. Whirroo! Shove it
up, my lads, shove it up. Away ye go. Look out for that fall of earth.
There she goes. Whirroo!" English navvies would have preferred
silence, would have requested him to hold his condemned jaw, would
have spent some breath in applying an explosive mining term to his
eyes, but these Irish labourers seemed to understand their superior
officer, and to cheerfully accept the situation. Mr. Sullivan was
civil and good-humoured. "These are a picked lot. Splendid set of
fellows, and good workers. No, they do not walk for miles before they
reach their work. The engine runs along the line to pick them up in
the morning, and to drop them again in the evening. They have
half-an-hour for dinner, and half-an-hour for tea. They get about
fifteen shillings a week. Boys get less, but thirteen shillings and
sixpence is the very bottom. Rubbish about low wages. Nine bob a week
is the regular farmer's wage, and these men would have been glad to
work for six bob. All have some land, every man of them. They have
just come back from planting it. We have been very short of men. They
went away at the beginning of April, and they were away for a
fortnight or three weeks. Small blame to them. Half or three-quarters
of them went to look after their bits of ground. But, barrin' that,
they turn up very regularly. They get fifteen shillings a week, where
they got nothing. And every man knows the convenience the line will be
to him to get his bit of stuff to Galway market, and also that it will
bring money into a country where there was none. They are as contented
as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. We have not heard a
grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. These Home
Rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle.
Since the work came from the Tories it must be bad. There must be a
curse on it. Now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (Excuse me, Sir.)
Whirroo, my boys. Look out! In wid it, thin! Whirroo!"
A big tank for engine water was being filled by an old man in shirt
and trousers, his naked chest shining a hundred yards away. Luke
Whelan was his name; a vigorous pumper, he. "'Tis hard work it is, ye
may say it. I have another tank or two to fill, an' keep filled, but I
have long rests, and time for a grain o' baccy, glory be to God!
Thirteen-an'-sixpence it is, but I lost my place at Palmer's flour
mills, the work gave out, an' but for this I'd have nothin' at all.
Was in the Fifth Fusiliers, but lost me sight (partly) in Injee. Was
in the army long enough to get a pension of ninepence a day. Me rint
is two pounds a year, and I've only the owld woman to kape. Ah, but
Balfour was a blessin' to us altogether! They talk about Home Rule,
but what good will that do us? Can we ate it, can we dhrink it, can we
shmoke it? The small farmers thinks they'll have the land for nothin',
but what about the labourers? Everything that's done is done for the
farmers, an' the workin' men gets nothin' at all. In England 'tis the
workin' men gets all the consideration; but in this counthry 'tis the
farmers, an' the workin' men that have no land may hang themselves.
When the big farms is all done away who'll employ the labourers? The
gintry that spint money an' made things a bit better is all driven out
of the counthry by the Land League. Ye see all around ye the chimneys
of places that once was bits of manufactories. All tumblin' down, all
tumblin' down. Nobody dares invest money for fear he'd be robbed of
his property, the same as the landlords was robbed, an' will be
robbed, till the end of the chapther. 'Tis nothin' but robbery ye hear
of, an' gettin' other people's property for nothin'. The Home Rule
Bill would dhrive all the workin' men out of the counthry to England
and America. They must have employment, an' they must go where it is
to be had. Engineers have been threatenin' this line for forty years,
first one route an' then another, but divil a spade was put in it.
England found us the money to build the line, an' the labourers get
work. Where will we get work whin nobody would lend us money to build
lines? An Irish Parlimint wouldn't build a line in a thousand years.
For nobody would thrust thim wid the cash. Yes, wid ninepence a day
and thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, I'm comfortable enough.
But begorra, the pump leaks, an' I have to pump a quarther more than I
should. Av the pump worked right 'tis little grumblin' ye'd hear from
Luke Whelan."