Oughterard in order that I might see the progress made by Irishmen in
the art of railway making. A gang or two were engaged in the
comparatively skilled work of rail-laying, and the way they got over
the ground was truly surprising. Two trucks stood on the line already
laid, one bearing sleepers, the other loaded with steel rails. Four or
five couples of men shouldered sleepers and laid them on the track at
spots marked by a club-footed Irishman, who swore at everything with a
vigour which spoke well for his wind. Several men lifted a thirty feet
length of rail, weighing nearly six hundred-weight, and laid it on the
sleepers, when it was instantly bolted and secured. The same having
been done on the other side, the trucks were pushed along the
newly-laid ten yards, and the process was repeated, the Irish ganger
above-mentioned swearing till the surrounding bogs seemed to quake. An
unhappy Connemaran having dropped his end of the sleeper a few inches
from the right spot, was cursed through the entire dictionary, the
ganger winding up a solemn declaration that he had not seen anything
so Blankly and Double-Blankly and forty times Blankly idiotic since
"the owld goat died." An English ganger hard by never spoke at all,
but no doubt his men felt lonely. A labourer who had hurt his foot,
and was awaiting a friendly truck to take him home, said of the
swearer:--
"He manes no harm, an' the Boys doesn't care a rap for his swearin'.
These men want no elbowin' on, for they are paid by the piece, so that
the harder they work the more they get. All Irish gangers swear like
that. An' Irish farm bailiffs is jist the same. Onless they're cussin'
an' rippin' an' tearin' they don't think they're doin' the work for
which they're paid, an' they don't think their masthers would be
contint wid thim. Av an Irish landlord that kept a bailiff didn't hear
him swearin' three miles away, he'd discharge him for not workin'.
English gangers an' bailiffs says very little, an' ye wouldn't think
they wor doin' anythin'. 'Tis quare at first, but ye get used to it in
time."
Travelling in any country is always instructive, no matter how much
about that country you previously knew. My lame friend may have
unconsciously suggested an explanation of the speeches and conduct of
the Irish Nationalist Parliamentary contingent. Unless they kept up
the cursin' an' swearin', an' rippin' an' tearin', so that they can be
heard across the Atlantic, their American paymasters might not be
contint wid thim, and might withhold the sinews of war. Once it is
understood that the Irish patriots must revile all and sundry to earn
their pay, the situation is to some extent explained. Few of them are
likely to fail in this supreme requirement. Six pounds a week for
abusing the brutal Saxon is far better than the pound or thirty
shillings of their pre-political days. They have no inducement to earn
an honest living.
The story of the Galway Bag Factory may serve as a pendant to the
story of Mr. McMaster's effort to benefit the Catholic peasantry of
the counties of Galway and Donegal. The concern had stopped for lack
of funds, and Father Peter Dooley went round the town endeavouring to
induce people to take shares in the concern, in order that the poor
folks of the district might have employment. The mills were reopened,
and at first, just at first, the people attended work with tolerable
regularity. They then fell off, coming for half a day, coming not at
all. The management actually instituted prizes for regularity of
attendance. The people, who professed to be dying for employment, had
to be bribed to come to work. Even this was ineffectual, and as a
certain number of people were required to work a loom, the absence of
one or two made the loom and the other workpeople idle, and as, in
order to pay expenses, every loom required to be constantly worked,
this skulking was not only annoying, but also a ruinous loss. Mr.
Miller, the manager, was compelled to get people over from Scotland,
after having long placarded the walls of Galway with notices of
vacancies which no Galway girls attempted to fill up. Father Peter
remonstrated, and pointed out that as he had been instrumental in
reopening the factory, he thought Mr. Miller should oblige him by
engaging Galway girls. The manager showed him the placards, and said
that if Father Peter would bring the people he would find them
employment. Father Peter Dooley went into the highways and hedges, but
not a soul could he bring in, although Mr. Miller seems to have been
so desperately beset that he would have jumped at the blind, the
maimed, the halt, and the lame. The good Father was beaten, but then
he had a reason--an excellent reason. When things go wrong in Ireland,
it is always some other fellow's fault, just as when the French are
beaten in battle they always scream _Nous sommes trahis_! Bad
characters had been admitted to the looms. Manager was surprised. Let
Father Peter point them out, and away they go--if Father Peter did not
hesitate to cast them again on the streets of Galway. Two girls were
dismissed. Some of the old workpeople returned to work intermittently,
as before. Father Peter wanted the two girls reinstated. The manager
declined to see-saw in this way, and sacrilegious Scotsman as he was,
dared to say that nothing went well when bossed by priests! From that
moment that manager was blighted. His sight grew dim, his hearing
became dull, his liver got out of order, his corns grew more numerous
and more painful, and a bald spot was seen on his crown. The people
worked as before, by fits and starts, but more fitty and starty than
ever. The factory was closed, and the manager died. They buried him
about a week ago, a sort of human jackdaw of Rheims without the curse
taken off. Protestants say the Galway workpeople wore him down, broke
his spirit and broke his heart, but Catholics know better. The only
wonder was that instead of being instantly consumed by fire from
heaven, Miller was permitted to waste away by slow degrees. But that
was Father Dooley's good nature.
The Galwegians say that a Belfast firm has taken the mill, and that
therefore its future success is assured. The cutest citizens say that
this entirely depends on the manager's theory as to workpeople. If he
brings them with him, well and good. The work will be done although
the workpeople may be boycotted. And then the Irish will have another
grievance. They will be able to point to the fact that of a large
number of workpeople only a small proportion of Catholics are
employed. This is the trick of Nationalists when speaking of the
intolerance of Belfast. The officials of that city, and indeed, of
every city in Ireland, are mostly Protestants, not because of this,
but because they are better men. The Belfast merchants and the Belfast
Corporation have a keen eye to the main chance, as is abundantly
proved by their success, and in business matters they will have the
best men, whether Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Turks, or Infidels.
Whatever the cause, it is certain that Protestantism turns out a far
larger proportion of able men, and in Ulster, at any rate, you rarely
meet a Catholic who is worth his salt. The Catholics of Ulster lack,
not toleration, but brains, industry, and business capacity. Anyone
who compares the harbours of Cork and Galway with Belfast will at once
appreciate the situation. Wherefore let not the Keltic Irish waste
their time in clamouring for the redress of non-existent grievances,
but buckle to and make their own prosperity. The destinies of nations,
like those of individuals, are in their own hands. Honest work is
never wasted work. Selah.
Athenry, May 27th.
No. 28.--COULD WE RECONQUER IRELAND?
The country people call this place "the back of God-speed," "the back
of the world," and "the divil's own hunting ground," but why they do
it nobody seems to know. The village is on the road to nowhere, and I
dropped on it, as it were, accidentally, during a long drive to the
remotest end of Galway Bay. Yet even here I found civilised people who
regard the proposed College Green Parliament with undisguised
aversion. Not the inhabitants, but Irish tourists, bent on exploring
the wildest and remotest nooks of their native land, among them a
Dublin barrister, whose critical analysis of the powers proposed to be
entrusted to the unscrupulous and self-seeking promoters of the Land
League may prove useful and interesting to non-legal English readers.
A Galway gentleman having during the drive pointed out a large number
of desolate mansions rapidly falling into ruin, the conversation
turned on the universal subject, and my legal friend embarked on a
dissertation on the iniquity of the Gladstone land laws, which have
had the effect of ruining a large number of the country gentry of
Ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the
landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear
to be no better off than ever. What surprised him most was the arrant
nonsense talked by the English Gladstonians, and the blindness and
apathy of the English people generally, who in his opinion were being
gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to
swallow up the prestige and prosperity of the British people. He
said:--
"Have Englishmen forgotten the previous history of the men she is now
on the point of entrusting with her future? Are Englishmen
unacquainted with the traditional hatred of the Irish malcontents? Do
they not know the aspirations of the Catholic clergy, and are they
ignorant of their immense influence with the masses? Surely they are,
or they would rise in their might and instantly trample out the
present agitation, which has for its aim and end, not the benefit of
Ireland, not the pacification of the people, who are perfectly
peaceful if left alone, not the convenience of Ireland in matters
which should be managed by local self-government, but the absolute
independence of the country, the creation of a national army, and the
affiliation of Ireland with some foreign Power hostile to England,
such as either America or France, as occasion might serve. America is
largely in the hands of the Irish electorate, and American politicians
would not be particularly scrupulous how they purchased Irish support.
No need to point out the embarrassing complications likely to result
from giving large powers to men who are essentially inimical to
England. You can do justice without putting your own head on the
block. It has been my business to analyse the bill, in conjunction
with other lawyers, Home Rule and otherwise in political colour, and
we are all agreed that the so-called safeguards amount to nothing, and
it would be incomparably safer for England to throw over the country
altogether. Because that is what it must ultimately come to, and we
think it would be better to avoid the inevitable agitation, the
terrible difficulties foreshadowed by the measure, difficulties which
would assuredly lead to the reconquest or the attempted reconquest of
the country.
"Gladstonians say this is an absurd idea, that Ireland could offer no
resistance worth mentioning, that the British arms would prove
instantly victorious over any show of resistance. But would you have
Ireland alone to reckon with? Once give her the prestige of a spurious
independence, once give to your enemies control over the resources of
the country, and you would find the task of reconquest much more
arduous than you think. The fact that England's distress would be
Ireland's opportunity has been so often insisted upon, both by
Unionists and the Nationalists themselves, that I need say nothing on
this point, which, besides, is so obvious as to be in itself a
sufficient answer to the Home Rule agitation under present
circumstances. But even supposing that you had no Eastern and European
difficulty--and we know not from one moment to another when war may
break out--supposing you only had Ireland to reconquer, do you think
this an agreeable prospect? Do you think that reconquest would settle
the Irish question? Do you believe that the shooting of a few hundred
patriots by the British Grenadiers would further what they call the
Union of Hearts?
"These followers of Mr. Gladstone who say, 'Let them have Home Rule to
quiet the country, to relieve the House from the endless discussion of
the Irish Question so that we can proceed with the disestablishment of
the Church, the Local Option Bill, and the thousand-and-one other fads
for which English Home Rulers have sold themselves'--the men who say
this, and who also say 'If they kick over the traces we can instantly
tighten the reins and reduce them to order,' surely these folks cannot
be aware that the Gladstone-Morley Government is unable to give
Strachan, of Tuam, the land which he has bought and paid for in the
Land Courts. The British Government cannot collect the rents of
Colonel O'Callaghan, of Bodyke; nor can it prevent the daily cases of
moonlighting and outrage which are so carefully hushed up, and which
hardly ever get into Irish newspapers. When the British Government
cannot make a few farmers either pay their rent or leave the land, the
said Government having control over the police and civil officers of
the law, how is it going to collect the purchase money of the farms,
in the form of rent, when it has not this control?
"The new police will be in the hands of a Parliament, elected by these
very farmers, who, so to speak, have tasted blood, have ceased to make
efforts to pay rent, have been encouraged in their refusal to pay by
the very men Mr. Gladstone proposes to entrust with the whole concern!
Will these farmers suddenly turn round and say, 'We declined to pay
when English rule would have forced payment, we shall be delighted to
pay when nothing could make us do so?' I have been connected with
Irish farmers and landowners for thirty years as a land specialist,
and I tell you that the thing will work exactly as I have said. Put
the Rebel party in power, and see what will happen to you. It is hard
to believe that Englishmen will act so stupidly in a matter so vitally
affecting their own interests. That is why educated people both in
Ireland and England do not believe the bill will ever become law. They
cannot conceive the final acceptance of anything so utterly
preposterous. But call on me to-morrow, and I will go into the legal
possibilities of the question."
So I gathered posies of bog-bean bloom and walked round the big
boulders with which this sterile region is thickly strewn. The natives
know nothing of Home or any other Rule, and you might as well speak to
them of the Darwinian theory, or the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, or
the Homeric studies of the Grand Old Man, or the origin of the
Sanskrit language. The only opinion I could glean was the leading idea
of simple Irish agriculturists everywhere. A young fellow who appeared
to be in a state of intellectual advancement so far beyond that of the
other Barnans as to be almost out of sight, said:--
"I'm towld that there's to be a Parlimint in Galway city that's to
find imploymint for the people, an' that ivery man is to have five
acres of good land for nothin', and that if it isn't good land he is
to have ten acres, and that there's to be an Oirish King in Dublin,
an' that all the sojers an' pleecemen is to be put out o' the
counthry, an' all Protestants is to go to England, an' that's all very
good, but the Protestants might be allowed to stay, for they're dacent
folks, but thin they say that nobody's to howld land but the
Catholics."
I met an old lady clad in the short skirt of the Connaught peasantry,
walking bare-headed, bare-footed, and almost bare-legged from chapel,
carrying a bottle of holy water, probably destined for some important
purpose within the sacred precincts of the domestic circle. Perhaps
the old man was rheumatic, or it may be that the fairies had spoilt
the butther, or that the cow was bewitched, or that the shadow of a
black Protestant had fallen across the threshold. She was a promising
subject for original conversation, but unhappily she could speak no
English. My Galway friend explained the bottle, and said "Here we have
true religion. If you want the genuine, unadulterated article you must
come to Galway, and especially to Barna. Look how she clings to it,
how she holds it to her breast, how reverentially she looks down on
it. Suppose she caught her foot on a stone, stumbled, and broke the
bottle! Horrid thought, involving (perhaps) eternal damnation, (unless
she were quickly absolved by the priest). There is piety for you! As a
good Catholic I am ashamed of myself when I think how little religion
(comparatively) there is in me. Education has been a curse. How happy
I should be if I had that old woman's simple, strong belief in the
virtues of holy water, especially when carried home in a well-washed
whiskey bottle. But, somehow, the more we Catholics know the less we
believe. We go regularly to mass, at any rate I do (my wife is very
devout), but I fear that Catholics have less and less faith in
proportion to their culture. But for the women Catholicism would not
hold its ground among the higher classes of Irishmen for so much as
five-and-twenty minutes."
It seems to me that the belief of uncultured Irishmen as to the
immense benefits to be derived from Home Rule is exactly on a par with
the belief of uncultured Irishwomen as to the immense benefits to be
derived from the sprinkling of holy water. No reasonable man, who has
carefully examined the subject, will for one moment assert that there
is a pin to choose between the two. The votes of these poor folks,
admitted by thousands to the electorate, have sent to Westminster the
hireling orators whose persistent clamour has turned a slippery
statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose
subterranean machinations--aided and abetted by men versed in
Jesuistic and Machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end
justifies the means--threaten to undermine the British Empire, and to
involve the citizens of England in political and financial ruin. A
pretty pass for a respectable individual like John Bull. England to be
worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests!
whose tincture of learning John himself has paid for--poor Bull, who
seems to pay for everything, and who would gladly have paid for
gentility, too, if the Maynooth professors could have injected the
commodity by means of a hypodermic syringe, or even by hydraulic
pressure. No use in attempting impossibilities. As well endeavour to
communicate good manners or gratitude to a Nationalist M.P.
My legal friend was full of matter, but many of his points were too
technical for the general reader. He said:--"Absurd to ask what an
Irish Parliament _will_ do, because we know the tendencies of the
present men. We must ask what it _can_ do, for it is certain that its
members will from time to time be replaced by men of more 'advanced'
opinions. Appetite grows by what it feeds on, and the Irish people
want to pose as an independent nation. Englishmen and Scotchmen say
Ireland would never be so foolish, and I am not surprised that they
should say this. But when did Irishmen act on the lines of Englishmen
or Scotchmen? They never did; they never will. The peoples are
actuated by entirely different motives. Englishmen look at what is
going to pay. They act on whatever basis promises the most
substantial return. Irishmen are swayed by sentiment."
Here I remembered a remark of Father McPhilpin, parish priest of
Kilronane, Aran Isles. He said:--"The Irish people act more for fancy
and less for money than any nation on earth. The poorest classes have
less sentiment than the middle classes. They are too closely engaged
in securing a livelihood. But the great difficulty of the English in
managing the Irish lies in the fact that the English people work on
strictly business principles, and that the Irish do not. The English
people do not at all understand the Irish; and the reason is perfectly
clear to me. They do not appreciate the extent to which mere sentiment
will move the Irish race, mere sentiment, as opposed to what you would
call business principles."
Returning to my barrister. He continued:--"The Dublin bar has
decided--has formally decided--that so far as the action of the
Executive is concerned the Irish Parliament will be a supreme and
irresponsible body. The action of its officers will not be in any way
subject to the review of the English Government. What does this mean?
Simply that the life, the liberty, the property of every citizen will
be entirely in the hands of the Irish Government. Do the English
people know this? I think not. For if they did know, surely they would
think twice before they committed decent people to the tender mercies
of the inventors and supporters of the Land League, with its ten
thousand stories of outrage and murder."
"Give instances of what they can do, say you? They can refuse police
protection to persons whose lives are in danger from the National
League. And, as you know, scores of persons are at this moment under
protection in Ireland. Mr. Blood, of Ennis, would be shot on sight;
Mr. Strachan, of Tuam, would be torn to pieces, if without the three,
or four policemen who watch over him day and night; the caretakers on
the Bodyke estate would get very short shrift, once the sixteen
policemen who guard the two men were removed. Blood discharged a
labourer, Strachan bought a farm. If, under the now _regime_, a farmer
paid rent against the orders of the National League; if a man
persisted in holding land from which someone had been evicted years
ago; if a man worked for a boycotted person or in any way supported
him, although it were his own father, he would be in danger of his
life. Would the new Government give police protection to such people?
To do so would be to stultify themselves.
"Then again the Irish Executive can refuse police protection to
Sheriffs' officers who desire to execute writs for non-payment of
rent. No, I do _not_ think they would refuse a police escort to
Sheriffs' officers proceeding to distrain on the Belfast
manufacturers. I think they would order a strong force to proceed,
fully armed, and I am of opinion that the police would require all the
weapons they could carry. Not a stiver would they get in Belfast,
until backed by the Queen's troops. Then the Ulstermen would pay--to
refuse next year. So the process will go on and on, with bloodshed
and slaughter every time, the British army enforcing the demands of
rebels, against loyalists who sing 'God save the Queen,' Quite in the
opera bouffe style of Gilbert and Sullivan, isn't it? Can't you get
Gilbert to do a Home Rule opera comique? The absurdities of the
situation are already there. No invention required. Immense hit. Wish
I knew Gilbert. Money in it. English people might see the thing in the
true light, if presented in comic songs, with a rattling chorus.
Friend of mine bringing out a Gladstone Suppression Company Unlimited,
forty million shares at twopence-halfpenny each. At a premium already.
Money subscribed ten times over."