voting powers of the Irish people. The priests do not deny that they
have this full control; they merely say they have a right to it.
Bishop Walsh, of Dublin, says that as priests, and independent of all
human organisations, they have an inalienable and indisputable right
to guide the people in this momentous proceeding, as in every other
proceeding where the interests of Catholicity as well as the interests
of Irish nationality are involved. He suggested, and the suggestion
was adopted, that at all the political conventions held in the various
Irish counties an ex-officio vote should be given to the priests! This
embodied the principle that if Home Rule became law the Irish
priesthood would have privileges which would make them absolute rulers
of Ireland. Cardinal Logue says:--"We are face to face at the present
moment with a great disobedience to ecclesiastical authority." This
was in view of the Parnellite rebellion against priestly dictation.
"The doctrines of the present day," said the good Cardinal, "are
calculated (horror!) to wean the people from the priests' advice, to
separate the priests from the people, and (here the Cardinal must have
shivered with unspeakable disgust) TO LET THE PEOPLE USE THEIR OWN
JUDGMENT." These are Cardinal's words, not mine. To make any comment
would be to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume
o'er the violet. Well might Mr. Gladstone say nineteen years ago:--"It
is the peculiarity of Roman theology, that by thrusting itself into
the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a
frequent theme of political discussion." Archbishop Croke was the
inspirer of the Tipperary troubles, worked out by his tools, Dillon,
O'Brien, and Humphreys. Dr. Croke helped to found the Gaelic Athletic
Association, which is well-known to be the nucleus of a rebel army.
Dr. Croke gave L5 to the Manchester Murderers' Memorial Fund, and
accompanied the gift with a letter stating that the men who murdered
Police-sergeant Brett were "wrongfully arrested, unfairly tried,
barbarously executed, and went like heroes to their doom." It was Dr.
Croke who supported a movement to raise a pension for James Stephens,
the Fenian Head-centre, the famous Number One, the general of the
Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. We are asked to believe that this
gentleman and his crew of subordinate clergy are eminently loyal, and
that the moment a Home Rule Bill puts it into their power to injure
England, from that very moment they will become friendly indeed, will
cease to do evil and learn to do well, and that the altars from which
England is now every Sunday hotly denounced will in future vibrate
with the resonant expression of sacerdotal affection.
These gentlemen must have a wonderful opinion of the gullibility of
the great Saxon race. But as they see a certain portion believe in Mr.
Gladstone they may expect them to believe in anything. To swallow the
G.O.M. plus Harcourt, Healy, Conybeare, Cobb, O'Brien, and the Home
Rule Bill is indeed a wonderful feat of deglutition.
Raphoe, (Co. Donegal), July 25th.
No. 53.--WHAT THEY THINK IN COUNTY DONEGAL.
The Stranorlar people can be excessively funny. In a well-known public
resort yesterday I witnessed a specimen of their sportive style. A
young fellow was complaining that the examining doctor of some
recruiting station had refused him "by raison of my feet."
"I heerd tell they wouldn't take men wid more than fifteen inches of
foot on thim," remarked a bystander. "The Queen couldn't shtand the
expinse at all at all in leather."
"Arrah, now, will ye be aisy," said another. "Sure, Micky isn't all
out so bad as Tim Gallagher over there beyant, that has to get up an'
go downstairs afore he can tur-rn round in bed. An' all on account iv
the size iv his feet. 'Tis thrue what I spake, divil a lie I tell ye.
The boy has to get up and go down shtairs, an' go into the sthreet,
an' come up the other way afore he can tur-rn round, the crathur."
"Hould yer whist, now, till I tell ye," said another. "Ye know
Kerrigan's whiskey-shop. Well, one day Kerrigan was standin' chattin'
wid his wife, when the shop-windy all at once wint dark, an' Kerrigan
roars out, 'What for are ye puttin' up the shutters so airly?' says
he. An' faix, 'twas no wondher ye'd think it, for ould Hennessy of
Ballybofey had fallen down in the street, an' it was the two
good-lookin' feet of him stickin' up that was darkenin' the shop. Ax
Kerrigan himself av it wasn't."
A roar of laughter followed this sally, and the rejected recruit was
comforted.
Stranorlar is pleasantly situated on the river Finn, in a fertile
valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of green hills, beyond which may
in some direction be seen the more imposing summits of the Donegal
highlands. The walk to Meenglas, Lord Lifford's Irish residence, would
be considered of wonderful beauty if its extensive views were visible
anywhere near Birmingham; but in Ireland, where lovely scenery is so
uncommonly common, you hardly give it a second glance. The tenantry
are mostly Nationalist, if they can be said to be anything at all.
They one and all speak highly of Lord Lifford, whose kindness and
long-suffering are administered _con amore_ by genial Captain Baillie.
They have no opinions on Home Rule or, indeed, on any other political
subject, and will agree with anything the stranger may wish. Whatever
you profess as your own opinion is certain to be theirs, and like
Artemus Ward they might conclude their letters with "I don't know what
your politics are, but I agree with them." Every man Jack of the
Catholic peasantry votes as he is told by his priest, and no amount of
argument, no amount of most convincing logic, no earthly power could
make him do otherwise. He will agree with you, will swear all you say,
will go further than you go yourself, will clinch every argument you
offer in the most enthusiastic way. Then he will vote in the opposite
direction. He thinks that in voting against the priest he would be
voting against God, and his religion compels him to conscientiously
vote against his conscience, if any. A burning and shining light among
the Home Rulers of Stranorlar having been indicated, I contrived to
meet him accidentally as it were, and after some preliminary remarks
of a casual nature my friend informed me that he was agin Home Rule,
as, in his opinion, it would desthroy the counthry; that the farmers
believed they would get the land for nothing, and that they were told
this by "priests and lawyers;" that he believed this to be a delusion
from which the people would have a dreadful awakening; that
Protestants were better off, cleaner, honester than Catholics; that
they were much more industrious and far better farmers, and so forth,
and so forth. This man is a red hot Nationalist, and was under the
impression he was "having his leg pulled," hence his accommodating
speech. When taxed with flagrant insincerity he only smiled, and
tacitly admitted the soft impeachment. Farmers you meet in rural lanes
will profess earnest Unionism, but--find out their religion--you need
ask no more. Whatever they may say, whatever their alleged opinions
may be, matters not a straw. They must and will vote as the priest
tells them. So that the last franchise Act endows every priest with a
thousand votes or so. Will anybody attempt to disprove this? Will any
living Irishman venture to contradict this statement? The fact being
admitted, Englishmen may be trusted to see its effect. Is there any
class or trading interest which would be by working men entrusted with
such enormous power? And these thousand-vote priests are unfriendly to
England, as is proved by their own utterances and by innumerable overt
acts. All of which merits consideration.
The Stranorlar folks are warm politicians. At the present moment
feeling runs particularly high, on account of the riot on King
William's Day, to wit, July twelfth. Two Orangemen were returning from
Castlefinn, a few miles away, where a demonstration had taken place,
and passing through Stranorlar, accompanied by their sisters, they
were set upon by the populace, and brutally maltreated. Several shots
were fired, and some of the rioters were slightly wounded or rather
grazed by snipe shot, but not so seriously as to stop their daily
avocations. The Catholic party allege that the Orangemen assaulted the
village in general, firing without provocation. The Protestant party
say that this is absurd, and that it is not yet known who fired the
shots. A second case, less serious, is also on the carpet. A solitary
Orangeman returning from the same celebration is said to have been
waylaid, beaten, and robbed by a number of men who went two miles to
meet with him. This also is claimed as Orange rowdyism.
A Protestant handicraftsman said:--"If we had a Catholic Parliament in
Dublin we should not be able to put our head out of doors. Those who
in England say otherwise are very ignorant. I have no patience with
them. Only the other day I heard an Englishman who had been in the
country six hours, all of which he had spent in a railway train,
arguing against an Irish gentleman who has spent all his life in the
country. 'Give 'em their civil rights,' says this English fellow. He
could say nothing else. Give 'em their civil rights,' says he. 'What
civil rights are they deprived of?' says the other. 'Give 'em their
civil rights,' says he. That was all he could say. He was for all the
world like a poll-parrot. He was one of these well-fed fellows, with
about three inches of fat on his ribs and three inches of bone in his
skull, and a power of sinse _outside_ his head. He turned round on me
and asked me to agree with him. When I didn't he insulted me. 'I see
by your hands,' says he, 'that you've been working with them, and not
with your brains,' says he. Well, he was a man with a gray beard, but
not a sign of gray hair on his head, so says I, 'Your beard,' says I,
'is twenty-five years younger than the rest of your hair, and it looks
twenty-five years older.' I see,' says I, 'that _you_ have been
working with your jaws and not with your brains.' That made him vexed.
He didn't know what to say next, and 'twas well for him. He was too
ignorant for this counthry, though he might do very well for them
places where they vote for such men as Harcourt or the like of him.
"The people of these parts are skinned alive by their religion. Not a
hand's turn can be done without money. Money for christening, for
confession, for everything from the cradle to the grave. And when
they're dead the poor folks are still ruining the counthry, for their
relatives run up and down begging money to get their souls out of
purgatory. I have no objection to that; let them do it if they like,
but let them not say they are poor because of England. The more money
they pay the sooner their father's or mother's soul is out of torment.
Of course they spend all they have. I was speaking with a priest
lately, and I said, 'Suppose I fell into Finn-water, and a man who saw
me drowning said, "I'll pull ye out for half-a-crown or a sovereign,"
what would ye think of him?' Says the priest, 'I'd think him a brute
and a heathen.' 'But suppose, instead of Finn-water it was purgatory I
was in, and the priest said, "I'll pull ye out for five pounds," what
about him?' 'Good morning to ye,' says the sogarth aroon (dear
priest). There was no answer for me."
Another Stranorlar man said:--"When the bill passed the second
reading, there was not a hill round about, for many a mile, without a
blazing tar-barrel on it, and the houses were lit up till ye'd think
the places were on fire. The people were rejoicing for they knew not
what. Says one to me, 'Ye can pack up yer clothes,' says he. They
think they will now get rid of the English, and have things all their
own way. That's their general idea. All their rejoicing passed off
without a word of dissent from any Unionist. But if we rejoiced--!
Suppose the bill were thrown out, and we lit a tar-barrel. We'd be
stoned, and, if possible, swept off the very face of the earth. On St.
Patrick's Day, March 17, they march over the place, flags flying,
drums beating, bands playing, and nobody says a word against it. But
if we started an Orange procession on July 12 in Stranorlar, we'd be
knocked into smithereens. And yet in the town we are about
half-and-half. Of course, when you get out into the wild districts the
Romanists greatly outnumber us. The plea of reduction of rent being
required is very absurd when you come to examine the matter. Many of
them pay three or four pounds a year only. What reduction on that sum
would do them any real good?"
A land agent of Donegal showed me one page of a rent book, that I
might bear witness to indisputable facts. There were twenty-one
annual rents on the page, and eleven of them were under two
pounds--most of them, in fact, were under thirty shillings. One man
held thirty-three acres for thirty-three shillings per annum. He had
paid no rent for two years. Another estate in Donegal has two thousand
tenants for a total rent of L2,800. The agent has to look after all
these "farmers"--to conciliate, threaten, soother, bully, beg, pray,
promise, cajole, hunt, treat, fight, curse, and comether the whole two
thousand a whole year for, and in consideration of, the princely sum
of a hundred and forty pounds. Many of the farmers have the privilege
of selling turf enough to clear the rent several times over, and of
course every man can shoot at the agent as much as he chooses, his
sport in this direction being only limited by his supply of
ammunition. Of late their powder has given out. Could not something be
done for these deserving men?
A superior Home Ruler, one of those honest visionaries sometimes met
in Ireland, said:--"For my own part, I confess that I aspire to
complete independence. Then, and not till then, would the two
countries be friendly. We in Ulster are ten times more patriotic than
Irishmen elsewhere, for it is in Ulster that we have been most deeply
wronged. The Hamiltons of Abercorn planted the country round here with
Scotch settlers, and various agencies between 1688 and 1715 are said
to have brought over more than fifty thousand Scottish families to
Ulster, which was already populated to its utmost extent. The Irish
were dispossessed, kicked out, and they have been out ever since. The
Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnel took flight to save their heads, and six
counties were declared confiscated--Londonderry, Donegal, Tyrone,
Fermanagh, Cavan, and Armagh. These were all 'planted' with English
and Scotch colonists. The land was given to certain favourites by the
English Government, which at that time was the stronger, and has
remained so ever since When we ask for our own again you cry out
'Robbery, robbery!' _We_ are the people to say 'Stop thief!' You say
the owners of the land rebelled, and their property was rightly
confiscated. We say they had a right to rebel, and that rebellion was
an honourable action. You took the country at first by force and
fraud. We have, and always had, a right to regain what belongs to us,
by any means in our power. We have never expressed affection for the
English Crown. We have never affected loyalty. We have been open,
honourable enemies, and have always said we were biding our time. We
are accused of fraud, of duplicity. Never was any accusation so
ill-founded. I can refer to a hundred, aye, to a thousand utterances
of my countrymen which clearly set forth the sentiments which animate
every single individual Irishman. These settlers are not Irishmen.
Their best friends would never claim for them Irish nationality. Most
of them came from the South-west of Scotland, where the most rigid and
bigoted Presbyterianism flourished. Their creed, as well as ours,
forbade any intermarrying. Separate they were, and separate they
remain. You might as well try to mix dogs and cats. And the attitude
of the two races is mutually antagonistic--exactly like dogs and
cats. They have led a dog and cat life from the first, and if the
Scots have thriven while the Kelts have made little progress, it is
because the Scots have been favoured by the English Government, which
is composed of Teutons like themselves. Let the Scots stick to
England. It suits them, it does not suit us. The Welsh don't like you
either, but they have not the pluck to spit it out. They will tell
Irishmen what they think, and it is not flattering to England. They
are quite as bitter as Irishmen, and, like them, look on England as
the biggest humbug, hypocrite, and robber in the world. I never heard
a Welshman speak well of England, and I have spoken with scores of
them. Now, we have a religious difference with England, which Taffy
has not.
"We claim that our nation is more talented than stupid England, more
sparkling, more brilliant. But we also say that as we are more
sentimental, and as sentiment is to us a matter of life and death, we
cannot develop our industries, we cannot do ourselves justice, while
subjugated by England. Freedom is our watchword. We want an army, a
navy, a diplomacy of our own. We do not admit that England has any
right to control our action, and we defy any man to prove that any
country has a right to dictate our laws. Independence must come in the
long run. Everything is tending in that direction. We may not get Home
Rule at present, but we _shall_ get it. Then we shall be able to
report progress. I believe that the material prosperity of this
country will increase by leaps and bounds in exact proportion to the
loosening of Saxon restraint, and freedom from selfish English
interference. Our trade has been deliberately strangled, our
manufactures deliberately ruined, by English influence on behalf of
English interests. Then you ask us to believe that we have benefited
by our union with England! We do not believe it. England has been the
greatest modern curse, spreading her octopus arms over every weak
country in the world. She goes to make money, and says she only wishes
to push forward civilisation. Read Labouchere's opinion of England,
and you will see what she is--a greedy, whining hypocrite. She holds
India by fear, at the point of the bayonet--all for greed. Then her
speakers get up on their philanthropic platforms, and after shooting a
few thousand niggers and poisoning off the rest with rum, they say
that such and such a country is now under the blessed rule of England,
which is established merely for the propagation of the truth as it is
in Jesus. You make out that your rum, rifles, and missionaries are
only instruments in the hands of the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Away with such hypocrisy! England is a
big bully, crushing the weak and truckling to the strong--truckling to
the weak, even, when fairly taken to. Look at the Transvaal. When I
see what a handful of Dutch farmers did with your grand army--when I
see how a country with less than a quarter of the population of
Ireland freed itself and knocked your bold army into a cocked hat, I
am ashamed to be an Irishman submitting to foreign rule. You will at
any rate see why we Irishmen in Ulster are even more rebellious than
our southern countrymen. It is because these devilish plantations were
in the North, and because we are outnumbered in the North by men who
are really foreigners. Let them be loyal. No doubt it suits them best.
But we will only be loyal to our country, which is Ireland, not
England. And if these Scots, wrongly called Ulstermen, don't like the
new arrangement, they can leave the country. No obstacle will be
placed in the way of their departure. That I can promise you. They
will leave the land, I suppose? That being so, we can spare the
settlers. And as they got the land for nothing, they must be content
to part with it on the same terms. Now you understand the No Rent cry.
Now you understand the No Landlord cry. The land was stolen from the
people, and the people carefully remember the fact. You hear
Nationalists speaking ill of the Irish members. The members have done
well for us. They have done grandly. Fourscore Irishmen have conquered
the British Empire, and without firing a shot. That after all beats
the record of the Boers, but they got complete independence. We are
not yet there; but it will come, it will come."
An equally intelligent Unionist, who bore a Scottish name,
said:--"Does it suit England to throw us overboard? Because that means
the giving up of the country. You can't hold Ireland without a friend
in it. Twice the Protestant population have saved it for you. Its
geographical position forbids you to give it up. That would ruin you
at once. And yet immediate separation would be far better than a
wasting agitation. Better plunge over a precipice than be bled to
death. Better blow out your brains than be roasted at a slow fire.
England is being kicked to death by spiders. And all in the interests
of Rome. If the people here had any opinions I would not say a word
against anything they might do, but they have none at all. They show
their teeth because they are told to do so. All the disturbances which
disgrace the country are excited by the priests, who pretend to
disapprove of them, but who secretly approve. For the priests have the
people thoroughly in hand, and whatever they really disapprove they
can stop in one moment.
"There is an organised clerical conspiracy to resist the law and to
keep the agitation on foot, with the object of obtaining a complete
Catholic ascendency. They bleed the poor people to death with their
exactions, and the number of new buildings they have lately erected in
Ireland almost exceeds belief. We have a splendid new Romanist Church
in this little place. Well may the people say they can't pay rent.
When Cardinal Logue's father died there was a collection for the
general Church which realised more than eight hundred pounds. When a
priest dies or when a priest's relative dies there is always a
collection for the cause. Eight hundred pounds out of the starving
peasantry of Donegal, for whose relief the English are always
collecting money! Cardinal Logue's father was Lord Leitrim's coachman,
and was on the spot when my lord was shot. The horse fell lame at the
right moment. Curious coincidence--very. This Home Rule farce is
growing rather stale. Cannot the English see that it is urged by a set
of thieves and traitors? Cannot they see that brains and property are
everywhere against it? And Gladstone's speeches show such ignorance of
the subject that no Irishman can read or listen with common patience.
To judge from his Irish orations I should say that he is not fit to be
Prime Minister to a Parliament of idiots. What do you think?"
I was sorry to dissent, but I said that to the best of my knowledge
and belief Mr. Gladstone was of all men best fitted for such a post.
Stranorlar (Co. Donegal), July 27th.
No. 54.--A SAMPLE OF IRISH "LOYALTY."