people are doing something. Not much, perhaps, but still something.
The port is handy for Liverpool and Glasgow, and a steam packet
company gives a little life to the quays. The barracks, not far from
the shore, indicate one large source of custom, for wherever you find
a British regiment you find the people better off. The Athlone folks
say that but for the soldiers the place would be dead and buried, and
the Galway people are complaining that the garrison, the hated English
garrison, has been withdrawn. This inconsistency at first surprises
you, but you soon grow familiarised with the strange inconsistencies
of this wonderful island. Dundalk has vastly improved during the three
dozen years which have elapsed since first I visited the town. There
is a Catholic church for every hundred yards of street, and on
Thursday last one of them at least was full to overflowing. It was the
festival of Saints Peter and Paul, and England was being solemnly
dedicated to Rome. There was no getting inside to witness the
operation, for the kneeling crowds extended into the street and
flopped down on their marrow-bones on the side walks. The men with the
collection plates could hardly hold their ground in the portals, and
many worshippers were sent empty away, raising their hats as they
reluctantly turned from the sacred precincts. This was between eleven
and twelve in the forenoon, so that the day's work was hopelessly
broken. Ireland has endless customs demanding cessation of labour, but
none demanding the pious to go to work. The Methodist and Presbyterian
churches were closed, and possibly their adherents were stealing a
march on the Catholics in the matter of business. The Church of
Ireland has a bright green spire, which at first puzzles the
unlearned. Its hoisting of the national colour is due to the fact that
the whole structure is covered with copper, which in its turn is
covered with verdigris. The surroundings of the town are pleasant,
and, although thatched cottages abound, they are very superior to the
dirty dens of Tipperary. Nearly all have the half-doors so convenient
for gossiping, and the female population of these cabins spend much
of their time in leaning over the lower half. The superiority of
Dundalk is by most people attributed to the strong mixture of
Northerners there resident, and the favourable position of the port.
Earnest Unionists are by no means scarce, and, as usual, they are the
pick of the population. The Parnellites are also present in strong
force, and this may account for the fact that Mr. Timothy Healy, the
respected member for North Louth, is unable to visit the chief town of
his constituency without a guard of two hundred policemen, paid and
commanded by his life-long foe--the base and brutal Saxon. A prominent
citizen said:--
"We have a number of Englishmen coming over here, and most of them are
Unionists. But a few birds of passage I have seen have vexed me with
their confident ignorance, and caused me to believe that English
Gladstonians are the densest donkeys under the sun. They are so
self-opiniated, and so full of self-satisfaction, that it is hard to
be patient with them. Not a few say simply that they are content to
leave the matter in the hands of Mr. Gladstone, and that as they
followed him so far, they will follow him to the end. They decline to
examine for themselves, although facilities are offered on the spot.
This must be the ruling temper of the English Home Rule party, for if
they stopped to examine for themselves, or even to hear the evidence
submitted by men of position and integrity they could never tolerate
the insane proposition of an Irish Parliament for a day. They
sometimes say that Irishmen should govern their own land, and that no
one could venture to dispute this proposition. This is their principal
argument, and some are led away by its show of reason. But what is the
truth?
"Irishmen _do_ govern Ireland. Listen. Is England governed by
Englishmen? Now Ireland has a far greater number of members in
proportion to her population than England has. These men have far more
power in the English Parliament than England herself, for they hold
the balance of parties. In every question, Irish or English, they have
the casting vote. So that they can almost always decide what is to
become law.
"Dundalk is at this moment placarded with a request that all men
should join in the glorious struggle for freedom. Unless the Irish
people were constantly told they were slaves, they would never know
it. They are fed on lies from their infancy. The current issue of
_United Ireland_ states in a leader that the prison authorities have
three times tried to get rid of John Daly, the dynamitard, by
poisoning him in prison. As if they could not do it if they liked! And
a few weeks ago, at an amnesty meeting at Drumicondra, a speaker
stated, in the presence of two or three members of Parliament, that
five of the thirteen political prisoners still locked up had been
driven mad by horrible tortures. What freedom do the Irish want? Have
they not precisely the same freedom as that enjoyed by England, the
freest country in the world? Have they not the same laws, except where
those laws have been relaxed in favour of Ireland? Have they not
religious equality, free trade, a free press, and vote by ballot? And
with all this they are told at every turn that they are the most
down-trodden nation of slaves on earth. Supposed they groaned under
conscription like France and Germany, what then?
"The English people have seen the results of the influence exercised
by the present Irish leaders. One would think that sensible Britons
would decline to entrust such men with power. Did they not bring about
the rule of the Land League, with its stories of foul murder which
sound like a horrible dream of the tyranny of the Middle Ages? Are
these men not hand and glove with the clerical party, which hates
England as heretic and excommunicate? It is not proposed by Home Rule
to put in office men who are the mere tools of the Catholic church,
the most unyielding and intolerant system in the world!"
I remembered the leader in the _Irish Catholic_, which sings a paean of
triumph over alleged successes against the Freemasons of Italy.
British Masons may be interested to learn that this authority couples
them with Atheists, Fenians, and Ribbonmen, and holds up the craft to
contumely and scorn. The acceptance by Mr. Gladstone of the principle
of Home Rule seems to rejoice the Papist heart. "Never was it more
clear than it now is that the indestructible Papacy exercises an
authority over the hearts and minds of humanity which nothing, neither
fraud, nor oppression, nor misrepresentation, can weaken or destroy.
How near may be the day of its inevitable triumph no man can say,
while that its coming is as certain as the rising of the morning sun
... none will doubt or deny. That in the moment when the Vicar of
Christ is vindicated before the nations, and the reign of right and
truth and justice re-established throughout Christendom, Ireland can
claim to have been faithful when others were untrue, will be the
proudest trophy of an affection which no temptation and no tyranny was
ever able to weaken or destroy." The Freemasons are expressly stated
to lie under "the terrible penalty of excommunication," but they are
afterwards lightly dealt with. They are regarded with an amused
tolerance by Irish Catholics, who only laugh to see them "hung with a
number of trumpery glass and Brummagem metal trinkets about their
persons, and generally indulging in an amount of fantastic and
childish adornment which would turn the King of the Cannibal Islands
green with envy." Their profanation of God's holy name and their
sacrilegious oaths are regretted, but they will never do much harm in
Ireland, where the people laugh at their "fantastic tomfoolery." A
parallel column advises the public to join in the present pilgrimage
to Saint Patrick's Purgatory, where the saint saw, by special favour
of God, the purgatorial fires. Another column advertises prayers at
fixed prices--a reduction on taking a quantity. The men who hold these
beliefs and opinions are the sole governors of Irish action, the sole
creators of Irish opinion. For the lay agitators who from time to time
have dared to oppose the clerics have been mostly suppressed, and the
few still in existence will probably disappear before long. Colonel
Nolan must hold this opinion, for when canvassing in Headford, the
parish priest came up and cut his head open with a bludgeon. The
gallant militarian submitted to this, and would fain have passed the
affair in silence. How many Englishmen would have stood it? This
incident, properly considered, should enlighten Britons on the
dominant influences of Irish Parliamentary action.
On the way to Dundalk I met Major Studdert, of Corofin, County Clare.
He spoke of the disturbed state of the district, and thought the
present condition of things scandalous and intolerable. He mentioned
the case of Mr. J. Blood, who has been four times fired at for
dismissing a herdsman. He said:--"Mr. Blood is universally admitted to
be one of the most amiable and benevolent of men. His herdsman had a
son who would not work, and who was reckoned one of the greatest
blackguards in the county, which is saying a good deal in County
Clare. Mr. Blood told him to send away this son, or he himself must
leave his situation. He refused, and Mr. Blood discharged his
herdsman, but with an extraordinary liberality gave him one hundred
pounds as consolation money. Since then Mr. Blood is everywhere
protected by four policemen. One of the bullets aimed at him passed
between his back and the back of the chair he was sitting in."
"I have only one argument for the country folks who talk of Home Rule.
I challenge them to show me a single industrious man in the whole
country who is not well off. They can't do it. What Ireland wants is
not Home Rule but industry. When they are at work they do not go at it
like Englishmen. I go over to Cheshire every year for the hunting
season, and it is a treat to see the English grooms looking after the
horses. They pull off their coats and roll up their sleeves in a way
that would astonish Irishmen. It is worth all they get to see them at
work. They get twice as much as Irish grooms, and they are worth the
difference. The people around me, the working people, do not perform
five months' work in a year."
And these are the people who are surprised at their own poverty, and
who monopolise the attention of the British Parliament, which toils in
vain to give them an Act which will improve their worldly position.
The Irish farmer is petted and spoiled, and a victim of
over-legislation. Do what you will you can never please him. Mr.
Walter Gibbons, of South Mall, Westport, told me of a case which came
under his own observation, as follows:--Rent, five pounds a year.
_None_ paid for seven years. Tenant refused possession. Landlord paid
tenant twenty pounds in cash, and formally remitted all the rent,
thirty-five pounds to wit.
"I saw the money paid," said Mr. Gibbons, a fine specimen of the
British sailor, present in the Cornwallis at the bombardment of
Sebastopol.
"And was the landlord shot?" I inquired.
"Not that I know of," said the old sailor.
Most people will agree that if ever a landlord deserved shooting this
was the very man.
The walls of Dundalk were placarded with a flaming incitement to
Irishmen to meet in the Labourers' Hall at eight o'clock, to "join in
the onward march to freedom." The meeting was to be held under the
auspices of the Irish National Federation--Featheration, as the
Parnellites call it and most of its members pronounce it--and
therefore it was likely to be a big thing, especially considering the
Parliamentary tension existing at the present moment. I determined to
be present, To beard the lion in his den, The Douglas in his hall; to
see the labouring Irish in their thousands marching onward to Freedom.
A friend attempted to dissuade me from the project. "You'll be spotted
in a moment, and as you are very obnoxious to the priests, to be
recognised at such a meeting might be unpleasant." A public official
who pointed out the place followed me up with advice. "Unless you are
connected with the party, it would be better to keep away. These
people are very suspicious." These were fine preliminaries of a public
meeting. The building is poor, but not squalid, and seems to have been
built within the last few years. A gateway leads to the yard and the
Hall blocks the way. All the rooms are small, and I looked in vain for
anything like an assembly chamber. Two roughish-looking men, who
nevertheless had about them a refreshing air of real work, stood at
the gateway, and from them I learned that the meeting would take place
upstairs. Twenty-four steps outside the building almost gave me pause.
At the top was an open landing, whence the Saxon intruder might be
projected with painful results. Trusting in my luck, I entered a
narrow corridor, some fifteen feet long, with doors on each side, and
one at the opposite end. That must open on the assembly room. No, it
only led to another flight of outside steps, and here it was
comforting to observe that the drop might be into the soft soil of a
garden, instead of a bricked yard. But where was the great meeting?
Once more I left the Hall and spoke my rugged friends. Yes, it was
after eight, but the people wanted a bit of margin. Half-past eight
was the time intended. Half-an-hour's march around, and back again.
The crowd was swelled from two to three persons. Fifteen minutes more,
and further inquiry.
"When will the meeting begin."
"When the people comes."
"But they're an hour late already."
"Sure ye can't hurry thim."
At 9.15 I went again.
"Meeting begun yet?" I asked.
"Just startin' now. The praste's afther goin' in."
"You're rather unpunctual."
"Arrah, how would we begin widout his Rivirince!" This was
unanswerable. Once more into the breach, up the lonely shivery steps.
This time I heard voices, and opening a door found a narrow room with
about twenty people therein. The show was just agoing to begin, for,
as I entered, somebody proposed that the Priest should take the chair.
A short, stout, red faced man, with black coat and white choker,
seemed to expect no less, and moved into the one-and-ninepenny Windsor
with alacrity. He spoke with the vilest, boggiest kind of brogue, and
the hideous accent of vulgar Ulster; calling who "hu" with a French u,
should "shoed," and pronouncing every word beginning with un as if
beginning with on--ontil, onless, ondhersthand, ondhertake. "Ye'll
excuse me makin' a spache, fur av I did I'd make a varry bad one,"
said the holy man, and the audience seemed to believe him. Enrolment
was the order of the day, and the thousands were requested to come
forward. A man next me went to the front and paid a shilling,
receiving in return a green ticket, with Ireland a Nation printed at
the top. He twirled it round and round, and seemed disappointed to
find there was nothing on the other side. The secretary encouraged the
meeting by the official statement that the local Featheration now
numbered nearly sixty members, whereat there was great rejoicing, the
masses (to the number of twenty) working off their emotion by thumping
their heels on the floor. The meeting, after this exultant outburst,
got slower and slower, and threatened to expire of inanition. Divil a
mother's son could be got to shpake a single wurud. Some malevolent
influence overhung the masses. His Rivirince sent down a messenger to
me with the request that I would say a few wuruds. Declined, with
thanks, as being no speaker. Uncertainty as to my colour and object
still prevailed; and silence, not loud, but deep, succeeded this
artful feeler. Father O'Murtagh (or words to that effect) to the
rescue! The Rivirind Gintleman arose and delivered a bitter attack on
Parnell, whom he characterised as mean, base, untruthful, treacherous,
and contemptible. The foinest pisintry in the wuruld could not be
soiled by contact with anybody like Parnell, and therefore the
Catholic bishops had been compelled to give him up, and to say, Get
thee behind me, Satanas. The dear Father did not tell the meeting why
the bishops waited sixteen days after the verdict of the Court, and
until Mr. Gladstone had delivered judgment, before deciding to cut
Parnell adrift. Father O'Murtagh (I think that was the name) made some
allusion to the present crisis of public affairs--(he called it
cresses)--and assured his masses that the Tories were about to be for
ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by
ascendency and greed! This was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a
Galway paper, which assures its readers that "the Unionist party will
soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has
been centred in their hands;" but it might pass. His Rivirince made
some feeble jokes, and the audience tried to laugh, but failed. "They
say that whin we luck at ourselves in the lucking lass, we see nothin'
but Whigs," said the funny Father, and the audience sniggered. This
was his masterpiece. He finished with "It's wondherful what a spache
ye can make whin ye have nothin' to say;" and the masses sniggered
again. Ten minutes more of silence broken only by whispered
confabulations of the secretary and chairman, and I grew tired of
obstructing the march to Freedom. I left the chair, the only one at my
end of the room, with considerable regret. Part of the back, one
upright, was still remaining, and although the thing had evidently
been used in argument at some previous meeting, it hung together, and
good work might still have been done with the legs. A gentleman with a
complexion like a blast furnace, and a facial expression which looked
like a wholesale infraction of the Ten Commandments, was smoking
moodily on the steps.
"Did ye injy the matein?" he inquired.
"Thought it rather dead," I replied.
"Faix, 'twas yerself that kilt it."
I feared as much. What happened after I left no man will tell, though
doubtless the resolutions adopted by the twenty men sitting on the
forrums of ellum would vibrate through the Empire, and shake the
British monarchy to its iniquitous base. Irish meetings must be taken
with a grain of salt. A Westport man long drew fees for reports of
mass meetings which never took place. Three or four Nationalists met
in a back parlour, and their speeches, reported verbatim, rang through
Ireland. Gallant Mayo was praised as heading the charge of Connaught,
and Westport was lauded for its public spirit. And all the while the
Westport folks knew nothing about it. The Dundalk folks will doubtless
be equally astonished to learn that the cause is advancing so
powerfully in their midst. This hole-and-corner meeting, waiting for
the priest, addressed by the priest, bossed by the priest, is a fair
sample of the humbug which seems inseparable from the Irish question.
A very short acquaintance with the country and its people is
sufficient to convince any reasonable person that the whole movement
is based on humbug, sustained by humbug, and is itself a humbug from
beginning to end. To see the English Parliament managed and exploited
by these groups of low-bred and ignorant peasants, nose-led by
ignorant and illiterate priests, is enough to make you ashamed of
being an Englishman. The country has come to something when Britons
can be worked like puppets by mean-looking animals such as I saw in
the Dundalk Labourers' Hall, where the only respectable thing was an
iron safe bearing the stamp of Turner, of Dudley. And this meeting, in
status, numbers, and enthusiasm, was quite representative of
Nationalist meetings all over Ireland. The English people are waiting
for their turn while Papal behests are executed. John Bull stands hat
in hand, taking his orders from Father O'Baithershin. The Irish say
that England is in the first stage of her decadence, and they say it
with some reason. England, the land of heroes, sages, statesmen, is
the mere registrar of the parish priest and his poor, benighted dupes.
Raleigh, Cromwell, Burleigh, Pitt, Palmerston, are succeeded by Healy,
Morley, Sexton, Harcourt, Gladstone. England is Ireland's lackey, and
must wait till her betters are served, must toil and moil in her
service, receiving in return more kicks than halfpence. Britannia is
the humble, obedient servant of Papal Hibernia. To what base uses we
may return!
Dundalk, July 1st.
No. 43.--IN THE PROSPEROUS NORTH.
This is a blessed change from dirt and poverty to tidiness and
comfort. After the West of Ireland the North looks like another world.
After the bareheaded, barelegged, and barefooted women and children of
Mayo and Galway, the smartly-dressed people of Newry come as a
surprise. You can hardly realise that they belong to the same country.
There are no mud cabins here, no pigs under the bed, no cows tethered
in the living room, no hens roosting on the family bedstead. The
people do not follow the inquiring stranger about, as in Ennis or
Tuam, where they seem to have nothing better to do. The Newry folks
are minding their own business, and they have some business to mind.
Three extensive flax spinning mills, two linen weaving factories, and
an apron factory, give large employment to girls. There are several
flour mills, some of them possessing immense power, and having the
most modern machinery. Two iron foundries of long-established
reputation, two mineral water factories, salt works, stone polishing
mills, seven tanneries, cabinet furniture manufactories, and
coachbuilding works cater for the town and surrounding district.
Granite quarries of high repute, such as the Rostrevor green granite,
exist in the vicinity, and are worked energetically, the products
forming a valuable addition to the exports. The town is beautifully
situated on a continuation of Carlingford Lough, the choicest bit of
sea around Great Britain. Thackeray says that if England possessed
this beautiful inlet it would be reckoned a world's wonder. Twenty
miles of winding sea running inland like a league-wide river,
mountains on both sides, many of them wooded to the furthest height.
Rostrevor is a bijou watering place such as only France here and there
can boast. You walk on the cliff side, steep verdurous heights above
and below, looking through tree-tops on the shimmering sea and the
purple mountains beyond, for ten miles at a stretch, wondering why
nobody else is there. Newry is encompassed by mountains, one range
above another. Even as the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so stand
the hills about Newry. A big trade is done with Liverpool and Glasgow
by means of the Dundalk and Newry Packet Company's fine service of
boats. For this inland place has been made into a thriving seaport,
and these Northerners make the water hum. At low tide the artificial
cutting of the navigation works looks unpromising enough, but the
people of these parts would be doing business if they had to float
the boats on mud. The hills are cultivated to the topmost peak, or
planted with trees where tillage is impossible. The people seem to
have made the most of everything. They are digging, hammering,
chopping, excavating, building, mining, and generally bustling around.
They break up the mountains piece-meal, and sell the fragments in
other lands. To make you buy they show you how it looks when polished,
and they are ready to earn an extra profit by polishing all you want
by steam power. The streets are clean, well-paved, kept in perfect
order. The houses are well-built and far superior to the English
average. A little cockney from 'Ackney, who has sailed the six hundred
and seventeen miles between London and Cork and has explored most of
the South and West, is quite knocked over by Newry. Leaning on the
"halpenstock" with which he was about to tackle Cloughmore, he
confessed that Newry hupset his hideas of Hireland and the Hirish.
"The folks round 'ere," he said, "are hexactly like hus." He would
have accorded higher praise, had he known any.