go away. We are only here on sufferance, and every person in the
Colony knows it and feels it only too well. Our lives would not be
endangered: those times are over, but we could not possibly stay in
the island. Remove the direct support of England, and we should be
subject to insult and wrong, for which we should have no earthly
remedy. What could they do? Why, to begin with, they could pasture
their cattle on our fields. If we turned them out they could be turned
in again; if we sue them we have a day's journey to take to get the
cause heard, and if we get the verdict we can recover nothing. Shoot a
cow or two! Then we should ourselves be shot, or our children. No,
there has been no landlord-shooting on the island. This kind of large
game has always been very scarce on Achil. Just over the Sound we had
a little sport--a really merry little turn it was--but the wrong man
was shot.
"A Mr. Smith came down to collect rents. The Land League was ruling
the country, and its desperadoes were everywhere. It was decided to
shoot Mr. Smith, after duly warning him to keep away. Smith was not to
be deterred from what he thought his duty (he was a Black Protestant),
and away he went, with his son, a neat strip of a lad about seventeen
or so. When they got half-way to the house which Smith had appointed
as a meeting-place a man in the bog which bordered the road called
out, and waved a paper, which he then placed on a heap of turf. Young
Smith went for it, and it read. YOU'LL NOT GO HOME ALIVE THIS NIGHT.
'Drive on, Tom,' said the father. 'We'll do our work, whether we go
home alive or dead.' Coming back the same evening the father was
driving, the son, this young lad, sitting at the side of the car,
which was furnished with a couple of repeating rifles and a revolver.
Suddenly three men spring up from behind a fence and fire a volley at
the two Smiths, but as they rose the horse shied and plunged forward,
and hang me! if they didn't all miss. The elder Smith still struggled
with the frightened horse, which the shooting had made ungovernable,
but the boy slipped off the car, and, seizing one of the rifles,
looked out for a shot in return. It was growing dusk, and the bog was
full of trenches and ups and downs, of which the three fugitives
cleverly availed themselves. Besides, to be shot at from a point-blank
range of three or four yards, scrambling down afterwards from behind a
frantic horse, is not the best Wimbledon method of steadying the
nerves. The boy put the rifle to his shoulder, and bided his time.
Presently up came one of the running heroes, and young Smith shot him
through the heart, as neat a kill as ever you saw. The dead man was
identified as a militiaman from Crossmolina, up Sligo way. The League
always brought its marksmen from a distance, and it is known that most
of them were persons who had received some military training. Then the
youngster covered another, but missed, and was about to fire again when
his father shouted, 'Hold hard, Tom, that's enough sport for one day.'"
My friend was wrong. The second shot lacerated the man's shoulder, and
laid him up for many a long week. I had the fact, which is now first
recorded, on _undoubted authority_. Young Smith may be gratified to
learn, for the first time, that his second bullet was not altogether
thrown away. This may console him for the loss of the third reprobate,
whom he had got "exactly between the shoulders," when the elder Smith
ordered him to desist. The occurrence was such a lesson to the Land
League assassins that they for ever after forswore Achil and its
immediate surroundings. As Dennis Mulcahy remarked, "The ruffians only
want shtandin' up to, an' they'll not come nixt or near ye." Mr.
Morley would do well to apply this moral to the County Clare.
The best authority in Achil said:--"The hat is always going round for
the islanders, who are much better off than the poor of great English
cities. They have the reputation of being in a state of chronic
famine. This has no foundation in fact. They all have land, one, two,
or three cows, and the sea to draw upon. For their land and houses
they pay nothing, or next to nothing; for good land in some cases is
to be had for a shilling an acre. The lakes also abound with fish.
They glory in their poverty, and hail a partial failure of crops with
delight. They know they will be cared for, and that provisions will be
showered upon them from all sides. They say, 'Please God, we'll have a
famine this year,' and when the contributions pour in they laugh and
sing, and say, 'The distress for ever! Long live the famine!' The word
goes round at stated intervals that they are to 'have a famine.' They
jump at the suggestion, act well together, and carry out the idea
perfectly. The Protestants never have any distress which calls for
charitable aid. They live on the same soil, under the same laws, but
they never beg. They pay their rents, too, much more regularly than
the others, who of late years can hardly be got to pay either rent or
anything else. The Protestants are all strong Unionists. The Catholics
are all strong Home Rulers. Their notions of Home Rule are as
follows:--No rent, no police, a poteen still at every door, and
possession of the land now held by Protestants, which is so much
better than their own because so much more labour has been expended on
it, and for no other reason. Who tells them to 'have a famine'? Why,
the same people who arouse and keep alive their enmity to the
Protestants; the same people who tell them lies about the early
history of the Colony--lies which the tellers know to be lies, such as
the stories of oppression, spoliation, and of how the mission took the
property of the islanders with the strong hand, aided by England, the
home of robbery, tyranny, and heresy. The people would be friendly
enough but for their priests. Yet they have marched in procession
before our houses, blowing defiance by means of a drum and fife band,
because we would not join one or other of their dishonest and illegal
combinations. They opened a man's head with a stone, producing a
dreadful scalp wound, and when Doctor Croly, the greatest favourite in
the whole island, went to dress the wound, five or six of them stopped
his horse, with the object of giving him a 'bating,' which would have
ended nobody knows how. The doctor produced a revolver, and the heroes
vanished like smoke."
The good doctor is himself a Unionist, but more of a philanthropist
than a politician. He is the parish doctor, with eight thousand people
to look after, the whole being scattered over an immense area. I
accompanied him on a twenty-mile drive to see a girl down with
influenza, much of the road being almost impracticable. Some of his
experiences, coming out incidentally, were strange and startling. He
told me of a night when the storm was so wild that a man seeking him
approached the surgery on all-fours, and once housed, would not again
stir out, though the patient was his own wife. The doctor went alone
and in the storm and blackness narrowly escaped drowning, emerging
from the Jawun, usually called the Jordan, after an hour's struggle
with the flood, to sit up all night in his wet clothes, tending the
patient. On another occasion a mountain sheep frightened his horse
just as the doctor was filling his pipe. The next passer-by found him
insensible. Nobody might have passed for a month. A similar
misadventure resulted in a broken leg. Then on a pitchy night he
walked over the cliffs, and was caught near the brink by two rocks
which held him wedged tightly until someone found him and pulled him
up, with the bag of instruments, which he thinks had saved him. And it
was as well to pause in his flight, for the Menawn Cliffs, with their
thousand feet of clean drop, might have given the doctor an ugly fall.
Two girls, whose male relations had gone to England, had not been seen
for three days. Nobody would go near the house. The doctor found them
both on the floor insensible, down with typhus fever, shut up with the
pigs and cows, the room and its odour defying description. The
neighbours kept strictly aloof. Dr. Croly swept and garnished, made
fires, and pulled the patients through. "Sure, you couldn't expect us
to go near whin 'twas the faver," said the neighbourly Achilese. Mr.
Salt, the Brum-born mission agent, was obliged to remain all night on
one of the neighbouring islands--islands are a drug hereabouts--and
next morning he found an egg in his hat. Fowls are in nearly all the
houses. Sometimes they have a roost on the ceiling, but they mostly
perch on the family bed, when that full-flavoured Elysium is not on
the floor. I saw an interior which contained one black cow, one black
calf, some hens, some ducks, two black-and-white pigs, a mother, and
eleven children. Where they all slept was a puzzle, as only one bed
was visible. The hens went whir-r-r-up, and perched on the bedstead,
when the lady smiled and wished me Good Evening. She looked strong and
in good going order. The Achilese say Good Evening all day long. A
young girl was grinning in the next doorway, a child of fourteen or
fifteen she seemed. "Ye wouldn't think that was a married woman, would
ye now," said a neighbour, with pardonable pride. "Aye, but she is,
though, an' a foin lump iv a son ye have, haven't ye, Maureen." Mr.
Peter Griffin, once a land commissioner, told me that a boy having
applied for the fixing of a judicial rent, the commissioners expressed
their surprise upon learning that he was married. "Arrah, now," said
the applicant, "sure 'tis not for the sake of the bit that the crathur
would ate that a boy need be widout one o' thim!"
In Achil, as elsewhere, the better people are certain that the Home
Rule Bill will never become law. From their point of view, the thing
seems too absurd to be possible. They are face to face with a class of
Irishmen, among whom civilisation seems to have made no perceptible
progress for centuries, who scorn every improvement, and are so tied
and bound down by aboriginal ignorance and superstition as to be
insensible to everything but their ancient prejudices. It cannot be
possible, they argue, that Ireland should be given over to the
dominion of these people, who, after all, are in the matter of
advancement and enlightenment fairly representative of the bulk of the
voters for Home Rule all over the country. The civilised community of
Achil are unable to realise the possibility of such a surrender. They
do not discuss the measure, but rather laugh at it. An able business
man said:--
"We get the daily papers a little old, no doubt, but we follow them
very closely, and we concur in believing that Mr. Gladstone will in
the long run drop the bill. We think he will turn round and say,
'There now. That's all I can do. Haven't I done my best? Haven't I
kept my promise? Now, you can't blame me. The Irishmen see it coming,
and they will get out of it as much dramatic effect as possible. The
party organs are already urging them to open rupture with the
Government. Compulsion is their game, and no doubt, with Gladstone, it
is the most likely game to pay. But he might rebel. He might grow
tired of eating Irish dirt; he might pluck up spirit enough to tell
these bullies who are jockeying him, and through him the British
Empire, to go to the Divil. Then we'd have a fine flare-up. Virtuous
indignation and patriotic virtue to the fore! The Irish members will
rush over to Ireland, and great demonstrations will be the order of
the day. The Irish love demonstrations, or indeed anything else which
gives a further excuse for laziness. The priests will orate, the
members will prate, the ruffians elate will shoot or otherwise murder
a few people, who will have Mr. Gladstone to thank for their death.
For what we wanted was twenty years of resolute government, just as
Lord Salisbury said, and if Mr. Balfour had been left to carry it out
Ireland would have come her nearest possible to prosperity and
contentment. But with steady rule one day, and vacillation, wobbling,
and surrender the next, what can you expect? The Irish are very smart,
cute people, and they soon know where they can take advantage of
weakness. The way these poor Achil folks, those who have been to
England, can reckon up Mr. Gladstone! They call him a traitor now. And
yet he promises to let the Irish members arrange their own finance!
'Here, my boys,' says he, 'take five millions and spend it your own
way.' Will John Bull stand that? Will he pay for the rope that is to
hang himself? Will he buy the razor to cut his own throat? Where are
his wits? Why does he stand by to witness this unending farce, when he
ought to be minding serious business? This Irish idiocy is stopping
the progress of the Empire. Why does not Bull put his foot on it at
once? He must do so in the end. Where are the working men of England?
Surely they know enough to perceive that their own personal interests
are involved.
"In Achil we have practically peasant proprietary and nothing else.
Eleven hundred men and women are at this moment in England and
Scotland from Achil alone. They will return in October, each bringing
back ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, on which they will live till next
season. The Irish Legislature would begin by establishing peasant
proprietary all over Ireland. The large farmers would disappear, and
men without capital, unable to employ labour, would take their place.
Instead of Mayo, you would have the unemployed of the whole thirty-two
counties upon you. Ireland would be pauperised from end to end, for
everybody who could leave it would do so--that is, every person of
means--and as for capital and enterprise, what little we have would
leave us. Which of the Irish Nationalist party would start factories,
and what would they make? Can anybody tell me that?"
I submitted that Mr. William O'Brien, the member for Cork, might open
a concern for the making of breeches, or that Mr. Timothy Healy, the
member for Louth, who was reared in a tripe shop, might embark his
untold gold in the cowheel and trotter business, or might even prove a
keen competitor with Walsall in the manufacture of horsewhips, a
product of industry of which he has had an altogether exceptional
experience. "Is not this true?" I enquired.
My friend admitted the fact, but declined to believe in the factory.
Dugort (Achil Island), June 22nd.
No. 39.--IRISH UNFITNESS FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT.
There stands a city neither large nor small, Its air and situation
sweet and pretty. It matters very little if at all. Whether its
denizens are dull or witty. Whether the ladies there are short or
tall, Brunettes or blondes--only there stands a city. Perhaps 'tis
also requisite to minute, That there's a castle and a cobbler in it.
It is not big enough to boast a barber. These indispensable adjuncts
of civilisation exist in Connaught, but only at rare intervals.
Roughly speaking, there is a space of about a hundred miles between
them. From Athlone to Dugort, a hundred and thirty miles, there is
only one, both towns inclusive. Castlereagh is a deadly-lively place
for business, but keenly awake to politics. The distressful science
absorbs the faculties of the people, who care for little else. Like
all the Keltic Irish, they are great talkers, and, surely, if talking
were working the Irish would be the richest nation in the world.
"Words, words, words," and no deeds. The Castlereagh folks are growing
despondent. The Irish Parliament that was to remit taxation, present
every able-bodied man with a farm, do away with landlords and police,
and reduce the necessity for work to a minimum, seems to them further
off than ever. They complain that once again the people of Ireland
have been betrayed. Mr. Gladstone has done it all. To be sure they
never trusted him, but they thought him an instrument in the hands of
Fate and the Irish Parliamentary party. Spite of all he is supposed to
have done for the Irish, Mr. Gladstone is not popular in Ireland, and,
as I pointed out months ago, they from the first declined to believe
in his sincerity. They rightly regarded his action anent Home Rule as
the result of compulsion, and, rightly or wrongly, believed that he
would take the first opportunity of throwing over the whole scheme.
That he should act thus treacherously (they say) is precisely what
might be expected from an impartial review of his whole career, which
presents an unequalled record of in-and-out running--consistent only
in its inconsistency. Having apparently ridden straight for awhile, it
is now time to expect some "pulling." His shameful concessions to the
Unionist party may be taken as a clear indication of his congenital
crookedness, and the refusal of the Nationalists at Killybegs, on the
visit of Lord Houghton, the other day, to give a single shout for the
Grand Old Man, bears out my previous statement as to the popular
feeling. Amid the carefully organised show of enthusiasm and mock
loyalty which greeted the visit of the Viceroy, not a cheer could be
raised for Mr. Gladstone. The local wirepullers did their best, but
the priests who for weeks have been arranging their automata, at the
last moment found that the dummies would not work. There were rounds
of cheering for this, that, and the other, and when the mob were in
full cry, someone shouted, "Three cheers for Mr. Gladstone." Dead
silence. The Gladstonian Viceroy and his following were left high and
dry. The flood of enthusiasm instantly receded, and the beating of
their own hearts was the only sound they heard. Mr. Morley's name
would have obtained a like reception. The people were doubtless
willing to obey their leaders, and to make some slight sacrifice to
expediency, but every man left that particular cheer to his neighbour.
Hence the fiasco for which the people have already been severely
reprimanded. Someone should have called for cheers for Balfour. Anyone
who knows the West of Ireland knows there would have been an outburst
of hurrahs, hearty and spontaneous. The Irish are delightfully
illogical.
A respectable old Fenian had a poor opinion of the present Home Rule
agitation. He said:--"I am of the school of Stephens and Mitchel. When
a people or nation is radically discontented with its rulers it should
throw them off by force. If the Irish could hold together long enough
to maintain an armed insurrection for two weeks only, help would be
forthcoming from all quarters. When a young man I cherished the hope
that this would be accomplished, but I have long abandoned the notion
that anything of the kind will be possible in my time. For individual
Englishmen I have as much friendship as anybody, not being himself an
Englishman, can entertain. What I dislike is English rule, and the
present movement does not interest me, because its leaders profess
allegiance--for the present, anyhow. No doubt the general idea is to
obtain as much advantage as possible, and to gradually increase the
strength of Ireland; but, in my opinion, the Fenian movement was the
true and legitimate method, and the one best suited to the genius of
the Irish nation. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written
by English speakers and writers, the movement was worthy of honour,
and had it been successful, would have received high praise and
commendation from every country except England. To be respectable,
revolutions or insurrections must be successful, or at any rate, must
have a certain amount of success to commence with. The English people
never properly understood the Fenian movement. To begin with, the name
of Fenians was not assumed by the Irish body of conspirators. The
Fenians proper were entirely confined to America, where they acted
under the instructions of John O'Mahony, with Michael and Colonel
Corcoran as lieutenants. The Colonel commanded the Irish brigade of
the American army, and was pledged to bring over a strong contingent
at the right moment. The Irish party in Ireland under Stephens was
called the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, to which I am proud to say
I belonged. That is all over now, and I am content to be loyal, under
compulsion. There is nothing else for it. The young men are all gone
to America, and the failure of the enterprise has damaged the prestige
of the cause. The organisation was very good, and you might say that
the able-bodied population belonged to it, almost to a man. England
never knew, does not know even now, how universal was the movement.
The escape of James Stephens, the great Number One, from Richmond
Bridewell, was something of an eye-opener, but not half so astonishing
as some things that would have happened if the general movement had
been successful. It was Daniel Byrne and James Breslin, who let him
out. Byrne was a turnkey, Breslin was hospital superintendent, and
both held their posts on account of their well-known loyalty. Byrne
was found out, or rather it was discovered that he was a Fenian, but
they could not prove his guilt in the Stephens affair, and he never
rounded on Breslin, who went on drawing his screw from the British
Government for many a long day, until he took a trip to America, where
his services to the cause landed him in a good situation. So he stayed
there, and told everything, and that was the first the British
Government knew about it, beyond suspicion of Byrne.
"If Stephens had made up his mind for an outbreak the funeral of
MacManus was the right occasion. He missed his tip then, and no
mistake. There never was another chance like that. He said the
arrangements were not complete, and from that moment the thing
dwindled away, and we who were working it up in the rural districts
began to think he did not really mean business. We were short of arms,
but a small success would have improved our condition in that respect.
Lots of the country organisers went to Dublin to see his funeral, and
when we saw the crowds and the enthusiasm we all agreed that such a
chance was not likely to occur again. MacManus had been a chief of the
insurrectionary movement of 1848, and had been transported for life to
Botany Bay, I think. He escaped to America, and died there in 1861.
Mahony, the Fenian commander-in-chief, proposed to spend some of the
revolutionary funds in bringing the body to Ireland, there to give it
a public funeral. This was a great idea, and as the Government did not
interfere, it turned out a greater success than anyone had
anticipated. There were delegates from every city in America, and from
every town in Ireland. It took about a month to lug MacManus from the
Far West to Dublin, and the excitement increased every day. In my
little place we collared all the timid fellows who had been holding
back before, until there was not a single man of the peasant class
outside the circle. MacManus was worth more dead than alive.
"A hundred thousand men followed the hearse through the streets of
Dublin. At the critical moment Number One held back. If the streets
had been barricaded on the evening of the funeral the country would
have stood an excellent chance of obtaining its independence. The
moment was missed, and such chances never come twice. The French would
have made a big thing of that affair. Stephens was great at
organisation, but he had not the pluck to carry out the enterprise. He
had not the military training required, nor the decision to act at the
right moment. So here we are and here we shall remain, and I am your
humble, obedient, loyal servant to command.
"No, I do _not_ believe in the present leaders at all. I think they
want to be paid big salaries as Irish statesmen, and that they are
unfit to clean the boots of the men with whom I acted thirty years
ago. The Fenians, or rather the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, had
no wish to make money by their patriotism, and what is more, they were
ready to risk their skins, whenever called upon to do so. They were
willing to fight. These chaps do nothing but spout. The I.R.B. agreed
among themselves, and obeyed orders. These fellows can't agree for
five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is--Who
shall be master? Gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for
them. A pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! They don't
know what they want. We did. We swore every man to obedience to the
Irish Republic. That was straightforward enough. The young 'uns round
here have the same aspirations, but they dislike the idea of fighting.
They expect to get round it some other way.