born, said, "It's all a matter of religion. I was the other day
reading Maxwell's account of the Irish rebellion of 1798, and I
observed that although the Northern rebellion, which was the most
dangerous, as being the best organised, was mainly led by Protestants,
yet in other parts of Ireland, when a suspected person was captured by
the rebels, the first question was, not are you in favour of the Irish
Republic, but what is your religion? And the Protestants generally had
their throats cut. The same thing would occur again, under similar
circumstances. Religion would be the test. If a general state of
lawlessness should at any time arise, the Protestants in lonely
districts would not be safe from murder. Yes, I _do_ say it, and I
stick to it. A very large number of outrages have been committed which
would not have taken place but for the religion of the offending
party. It is a virtue to lie to a heretic, to cheat him, to damage
him, to keep him out of heaven if possible. Anybody who knows Catholic
Ireland would agree with this most heartily. They believe that
whosoever killeth heretics doeth God service.
"Irish folks are better than the people of other nations, and also
much worse. When they are good they are very good, and when they are
bad they are very bad. They run to extremes in a way which cool-headed
Britons do not understand. They are impulsive, and they jump to
conclusions. Their great disadvantage is a crushing clerical
influence. What's the use of thinking about anything when Father Pat
does it for them? What's the use of listening to argument when you
must in the end vote as Father Pat orders?
"Englishmen have no idea what a splendid fellow the Irish peasant
really is when his mind is not poisoned and his unfortunate ignorance
exploited. I could give you instances of fidelity, affectionate
self-sacrifice and devotion which would astonish you. Not isolated or
sporadic cases, but arising from the average level of the Irish
character. After considerable travel, and a painstaking study of the
characteristics of various nations, I have come to the conclusion
that, taking one consideration with another, I prefer Paddy, ignorant
as he is. For after all his ignorance is not his own fault. He sees no
newspapers except an occasional local sheet, which is almost certain
to be a wretched, lying, priest-inspired rag. If he were seen looking
at any other it would be bad for him. But newspapers are practically
unknown in the agricultural districts. And men do not meet in crowds
as in England. They have not the attrition which wears away the
angularities. They live solitary among the mountains, or away in the
fields, and they never hear lectures, have no Institutes, get no
chance of improvement. The priest is their Clan Chieftain, their
spiritual adviser, their temporal adviser, their newspaper, their only
channel of superior information." At this point a tall, red-bearded
man who was passing touched his hat to the Colonel, who said, "My
gamekeeper. A fine, rough-coated Scotsman. Came over here a mad
Gladstonian. Pinned his faith to the G.O.M. Followed him blindly, and
owned he was content to do it. Get into conversation with him. Observe
the change, the decided change in his opinions."
Soon I had Velveteens in full cry. His opinions were indeed decided.
Having admitted that they had boxed the compass during a six months'
residence in this down-trodden country, he went on to say, "The only
way ye could cure the discontent is to make no attempt at it. Then the
agitation would stop. The people are the biggest fules I ever saw.
Instead of returning a sound, advanced Radical like Emerson T.
Herdman, a man who pays them thirty or forty thousand a year, and who
spends all his money in their midst, the fules go and vote for a thing
like Arthur O'Connor, who never was here but once, and who never did
them the compliment of issuing an address. When Mr. Herdman came to
Stranorlar the people stoned him and his friends. And yet nobody ever
said, or could say, a word against the Herdmans, who are among the
most popular people in Ireland, and who deserve the best that can be
said of them. O'Connor costs these poor folks two hundred pounds a
year. They raise it in the constituency. Mr. Herdman would have cost
them nothing, and might have spent even more than he does at present.
He has opened up the greatest industry in the North-west of Ireland,
keeps a whole country-side going, and is an out-and-out Liberal. The
greatest exertions were made to secure his return, and the Catholics
promised to vote for him. He stumped the country, and left no stone
unturned. The Nationalist candidate never came here till the last
moment, and, as I said, issued no address. The people knew nothing of
him, and had never heard of him. But they voted as the priests told
them, and they would have voted for a stick. Ought such people to have
the franchise?
"What would I do to settle the Irish question? I've heard that
somebody proposed sinking the country for twenty-four hours. That
might do. Or you could withdraw the police and military, and in every
market town open a depot for the gratuitous distribution of arms and
ammunition. In ten days there would only be a very small population,
and you could then plant the country with people who would make the
best of it, and mind their work, instead of spending their time
standing about waiting for Home Rule to make them rich without work.
Or you could make a law which required every priest in the country to
clear out in twenty-four hours, on penalty of death. That is as
impossible as sinking the island, but it would be quite as sure a
cure. Those are my opinions, and those must be the opinions of every
man who has lived here and looked about him for a reasonable length of
time. The Scots Gladstonians are very decent folk. They mean well, and
they are friendly to Ireland. Their only fault lies in following their
hero, and in thinking that he cannot do wrong. If they knew what I
know, they would be of my mind. For I was as great a Gladstonian as
any of them."
A Presbyterian farmer said:--"On this estate the whole of the tenants
are Presbyterians. The agent told me that early in June the whole of
the rents up to May were paid, and that he would think that there was
not such another case in Ireland. How is that? Well, if the tenants
had been Romanists they would have so many things to pay. The priests
live like fighting cocks. Father McFadden, of Gweedore, makes from a
thousand to fifteen hundred a year. That is the man on whose door-step
Inspector Martin was murdered. The crowd beat out his brains with
palings, and when he tried to get into the priest's house, the door
was shut in his face. The clergy live well, and drink like troopers.
The easiest job in Ireland, and--if your conscience would allow
it--the best in every way. You are treated with great respect, you
have great influence, you have nothing to do, and you are extremely
well paid for it. Sometimes I think that humbug pays better than hard
work. The priests do _not_ look after the poor. They do _not_ work
among the destitute and ignorant after the fashion of the English
clergy. They are always extracting, extracting, extracting. The poor
are ground down by their exactions till they can't pay their rent. And
that is why the agent said that probably no other estate in Ireland
could show such a record as ours.
"Home Rule will not satisfy the people. An Irish Parliament will do
them no good, no, nor fifty Irish Parliaments. They are unfriendly to
England because she is Protestant. People of the only true faith
cannot bear to be governed by a heretic nation. The laws are all
right, and they know it, but their animosity is excited by stories of
wrong-doing in their forefathers' days, and while on the one hand they
feel that they might easily be better off, on the other they are told
that the brutal Saxon keeps them poor. All this is done by the
priests. They actually admit that the English laws are excellent, but
then they fall back on the allegation that their administration is
corrupt. In vain you point to the Roman Catholic judges. In vain you
go over England's successive attempts to pacify Ireland by
conciliatory measures. The priest ruins all, for while your friend
seems to agree with you--they are so easily led--yet the priest will
secure his vote to a certainty. So long as a heretic power is at the
head, so long Ireland will be discontented. If the country were under
the rule of a Roman Catholic power, the people of Ireland would be
satisfied with any laws whatever. They would not grumble at anything.
The only alternative is the spread of education, and that goes on very
slowly in Ireland. We are very, very backward in Donegal, but not
nearly so bad as in the south and west. We have a bad name for poverty
and ignorance, but we do not deserve it in the same degree as the
Munster and Connaught folks. We dislike the Connaught people just as
much as you do in England. We hate dirt, and lawlessness and disorder,
and therefore we claim to be superior to the rest of the poor
counties. This is, of course, the civilised part of Donegal. But
wherever you go, you see nothing like the dirt of counties Galway and
Mayo.
"We want railways to open up the country. Balfour was building them
for us, and his institution of the Congested Districts Board did
wonderful things for us. Why, if he had done nothing but improve the
breed of fowls he would still have been worthy of remembrance as a
benefactor of this country. Before the Congested Board Committee
introduced superior breeds of fowls, the chickens were like
blackbirds. You could sit down and eat half-a-dozen of them. They were
no bigger than your thumb. But now we can get fowls equal to anything
you have in England. The same may be said of the horses, the pigs, the
cows, and all kinds of domestic animals and poultry. The fishing
industry has saved whole districts from starvation, and has done good
all round. When we get an Irish Parliament the grants for all these
purposes will be discontinued, and the tide of progress will be
checked. The poor folks are quite unable to see that by sticking to
England we have a wealthy neighbour to borrow from, and that this is
an inestimable advantage to a poor country like Ireland. Not long ago
I mentioned this to a priest, but he said, 'When we have a Parliament
of our own we'll not need to borrow money, for we'll have more than we
know what to do with. Did not Mr. Gladstone say we should have a
chronic plethora of money? John Bull certainly sends some money over
here, but he had it from here to begin with. He stole it from Ireland,
and he is only like a thief whose conscience urges him to restore a
portion, a very small portion, of the stolen goods. When we get
Independence--he used the word Independence--we shall be in a position
to lend money instead of needing to borrow!' The person who said all
this is the most influential politician of this district. His word to
his flock is law. Not one of them dare for his life vote otherwise
than as he tells them. They do not think this a hardship. They have no
political convictions, and would just as soon vote any one way as any
other."
A Donegal Home Ruler said that the poor folks were quite right in
following the priests, and wanted to know if they would be right in
following the Tories. He said:--"They are no more ignorant than the
British working men, and not less independent. Don't the working
classes follow their leaders, voting in heaps, just as they are told,
without any notion of the Empire's greatness, and entirely with a view
to their own interests? Could anybody be more stupid, more totally
incapable of giving a valid reason for his action than your vaunted
British workman? Why, if the specimens we get over here are any guide,
if the samples are anything like the bulk, you might as well poll a
flock of sheep as a crowd of British working men. I say the Irish
peasantry are superior in intellect, conduct, and chayracther, and
that in following the priest they are acting as reasonable as your
British working-man, who follows his strike leaders and trade
agitators, and is perpetually cutting off his nose to spite his face.
No, we shall not get Home Rule now, but we must have it later on. Then
we shall demand more. Every time we have to ask we shall want more
and more. We shall wring it from England, and we shall make her pay
for the trouble she gives. She must be charged a sort of war
indemnity."
The Dundalk press is on my track. I heard of this in Newry, but the
Dundalk papers do not reach the next town to Dundalk, and not a sheet
could be had for love or money. A friend having told me that the
_Gazette_ was reviled, great efforts were made to obtain the reviling
print, but in vain. At last I saw the _Dundalk Democrat_, which in a
two-column comment on its colleague's maledictions of your humble
commissioner cleared me of the charges brought by the original
thunderer, which I have not yet been able to see. One of the said
charges is based on the statement that I asked to be allowed to be
present at the meeting, which permission was readily accorded. The
meeting was public and was placarded from one end of Dundalk to the
other. The public were invited to assemble in their thousands, and to
join in the onward march to freedom. Not more than twenty people
answered to the call, and the meeting was therefore a dead failure.
The idea of asking leave to be present at a public meeting is absurd.
The vituperative print says that I was _not_ asked to deliver an
address, but was told that I could "do so if I liked." The truth is
manifest by the admitted fact that I declined, as being no speaker.
Such is the minute hair-splitting of Irish argumentation. The quips
and cranks of Tipperary Humphreys will be remembered, the paltry
quibbles by which he sought to establish a case, and his final retreat
under cover of the statement that he could not have believed that
"such a state of things was possible." The Dundalk marchers to freedom
(to the number of twenty) were not precisely the pick of the local
respectability, and my escape must be regarded as providential. As to
their outpourings of abuse, my philosophy resembles that of the old
whipper-in of the Meynell-Ingram Hounds:--"I bain't a cruel chap, I
bain't. But when I puts the lash among the hounds I _dew_ like to hear
'em yowl; I _dew_ like to see 'em skip, and writhe, and look mad. For
if ye don't make 'em feel, and if ye can't hear 'em yowl, there's
railly no pleasure in thrashin' of 'em."
Donegal, August 1st.
No. 56.--DO-NOTHING DONEGAL.
Donegal improves on acquaintance. At first dull, dreary, and
disappointing, a more extended examination reveals much that is
interesting. The river Eske runs through the town, rippling over a
rocky bed of limestone like the Dee at Llangollen. Mountains arise on
every hand, some in the foreground, green and pleasant, backed by
sterile ranges having serrated summits, dark and frowning. The harbour
has an old-world look, with its quaint fishing boats and groves of
trees running down to the water's edge. The land is decidedly humpy,
and the sea meanders among the meadows in long fillets like trout
brooks, sometimes tapering off to narrow ditches over which you can
easily step at highest tide. The land is fertile, mostly grazing, and
the cattle are of large and superior breed. The country is well
wooded, and the hedgerows are tall and well-kept. The ancient abbey,
like Mr. Gladstone's reputation, is in ruins. There is a ruined castle
on the river bank, and on the other side, exactly opposite, a
Methodist church, bearing the legend, ALL ARE WELCOME. The principal
"square" is triangular, and has some good shops, which do most of
their business on market-days. An enormous anchor, half embedded in
the mud of the harbour, was left there by the French fleet during "the
throubles of the ruction." It is rather in the way, but three
generations of Irishmen have not found time to remove it. "Like
ourselves and our counthry it will stick in the mud until the end of
time," said a native. There is much lounging at corners by men who are
probably waiting for the Home Rule Bill, but the people compare
favourably with those of the South and West. They have more grit, more
industry, more perseverance. They are simple, civil, and obliging.
They are also cleaner and more tidy than the Southerners, though
decidedly poorer. "They get no price for their produce, no reasonable
wages for their industry. Their patience and contentment are
surprising, considering their circumstances. You can get work done for
twopence a day. The Southerners get thrice the money for their farm
produce. We have no ready means of getting things on the market. I
have thirty tons of hay to sell, and nobody in the district would give
me a pound for it." Thus spake one of the leading citizens, a Roman
Catholic, dead against Home Rule. "The resident gentry are all we have
to depend upon. Once plant a Parliament in Dublin, and there will be a
general exodus of the moneyed classes. Then the poor folks will have
nobody to look to, and they must follow them to England--which will
certainly be overrun with destitute Irish. Things have grown worse and
worse during the last ten years. Under a steady Government the country
would gradually improve until the comfort of the people would give the
agitators nothing to work upon. But with change upon change, with one
final settlement upon another final settlement, we don't know where we
are, nor what is going to happen next. How can we settle down to work?
How can we launch out into industrial enterprises? Every man who has
anything holds his hand for fear of loss. An Irish Parliament would be
a Parliament of confiscation, and nobody knows where they would draw
the line. Mr. Gladstone's land legislation has been a succession of
swindles. The principle of judicial rents is an atrocious violation of
the principles of business, one of which lays down the dictum that a
thing is worth as much as it will fetch. Surely the landlord ought to
be allowed to accept the offer of the highest bidder. And if you take
from him that right, and say to him you shall only accept such a
price, then you should at least guarantee the payment. But no, Mr.
Gladstone says you shall only have a certain price, and you must
recover the money as best you can. The judicial rent law, so much
vaunted, is not so good as it looks. It is often a premium on
indolence and a punishment of industry, and therefore grossly unjust.
Let me tell you how it works in Donegal.
"Thirty years ago two men took contiguous farms of exactly the same
extent, at the same rent. There was not a pin to choose in the land,
either. One of them worked continuously, improving the farm until he
almost wrought himself to pieces. He and his children were at it night
and day, and their industry did wonders, as it always does. The other
was a lazy fellow, who lay in bed till mid-day and spent half his
waking hours at fairs and dances. The land in his occupation
deteriorated until it seemed to want reclaiming. The rent of both
farms was ten pounds a year. The Land Commission had both cases before
them, and, of course, based their estimate on the present value of the
land, without reference to any other considerations. Now mark what
happened--
"The industrious man, who should have received a premium as a
benefactor of his country, had his rent raised from ten pounds to
eighteen.
"The lazy man, who should have been kicked out of the country as
worthless, and an enemy to progress, had his rent reduced from ten
pounds to two pounds fifteen shillings.
"The judicial reductions have hardly ever been of real benefit. The
average Irish peasant is so constituted that when he has less to pay
he simply makes less effort, or spends the difference, and more than
the difference, in extra whiskey.
"The Donegal peasantry derive much benefit from the Irish practice of
con-acre. Con-acre means that the land is rented for one crop. It pays
the landowner well, and he always gets his money. The man who has no
land hires a piece for his potatoes, or for his oats, takes possession
when he puts in his seed, and delivers up possession when he gets his
crop off the ground. They pay, I think, because they have not the land
long enough to long for it altogether."
I climbed the hill behind the Arran Hotel in company with the
proprietor, Mr. Timony, who also runs several large shops in Donegal.
The view is magnificent, extending in one direction to Carnowee and
the Blue Stack mountains, in another far over the wood-fringed bay,
and southward to the Benbulben range, terminated by a steep descent
like the end of a house. Mr. Timony is a Romanist, but is strongly
opposed to Home Rule, which in his opinion would lead to endless
trouble and confusion, and would, bring distress on the district, and
not prosperity. The hill was covered with mushrooms, which were
rotting unregarded. Mine host confessed that he did not know the
edible from the poisonous fungi, and said that the peasants of Donegal
were in the same case. "There are tons of these things on the
mountains, but no one gathers them. They would be afraid to go near
them for fear they would drop down dead on the spot." He showed me a
large stock of hand-woven cloth made by the peasantry, who, to their
credit, have mastered the process from beginning to end, and with
their rude appliances produce a good-looking article, of which the
only fault is that it can never be worn out. Irishmen will not buy it,
but England is an excellent customer, and the trade, already large, is
rapidly increasing. Good tweed, twenty-seven inches wide, may be
bought in Donegal for a shilling a yard, and stout twills for
one-and-sixpence. The people shear the wool, card it, spin it, dye the
yarn made from herbs growing on the sea-shore, on the rocks, in the
meadows, and weave it into cloth, which is much in vogue for shooting
suits and ladies' dresses. The pieces run from twenty to seventy yards
long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a
ready sale at the wholesale depots, the price being regulated by the
fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. The
Nationalist advice to burn everything English except English coals, is
as hollow as other patriotic utterances. But for England the Donegal
peasantry would have no market for their goods. "It isn't fine enough
for Irishmen," said Mr. Timony. "They prefer English shoddy. They like
the smooth-looking cloth such as I have seen made in Yorkshire,
manufactured out of rags. There's not ten pounds of wool in a thousand
yards of it. It looks more eyeable, but there is no length nor
toughness in the thread, which is made out of old worn-out cloth. Our
folks couldn't spin it. They must use good new yarn, or they couldn't
work at all. The Yorkshire folks have machinery, and you can do
anything with machinery."