the pass their Grand Old Gagger has brought them to. The finest
assembly of gentlemen in the world are bandying evil names and
punching each other's heads. Just what you might expect when the Prime
Minister has allied himself with blackguards and law-breakers. I used
to be one of his staunchest supporters, but I draw the line at lunacy.
When I saw him truckling to low-bred adventurers who are not worth
sixpence beyond what they can wring from their dupes, I thought it
time to change my course. When I saw the class of men with whom he
acts and under whose orders he works, I changed my opinion of the man.
For evil communications corrupt good manners, and a man is known by
the company he keeps. The whole session has been a degradation of the
British Parliament. Things have been going from bad to worse until we
have reached the climax. If Mr. Gladstone remains in power we must
change the qualifications of our members, and send the best fighting
men and the hardest hitters. We must heckle candidates as to their
'science,' and ascertain if their wind is good, and whether they are
active on their pins. And in course of time, if the G.O.M. still
presides, we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out
'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless
accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long
churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is
bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long
time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,'
without a word of protest from the Prime Minister, you must admit that
the dignity of the House is a thing of the past. When you see the
general trend, you can judge what will be the result. When you see in
which direction a man is going, you can judge where he will arrive at
last.
"For my part, and I can speak for all my friends, we have the greatest
confidence in the English people's commonsense, and in the long run we
know it will not fail. The Scotsmen, who are honest politicians and
keen, are throwing over Mr. Gladstone and all his works, although he
was for so long their greatest pride. And we are sure that the few
Englishmen who at the last election followed in his wake will see
their error, and that they will joyfully seize the first opportunity
of repairing their mistake. What would happen if the bill became law?
Nothing but evil. The Methodists would leave these parts in a body. We
could not remain with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin. We should not
be safe but for the English shield that covers us. The people, as a
whole, are quiet enough--when left alone. But they are very excitable.
Kind and civil as they may seem, they turn round in a moment. They
will believe anything they are told, their credulity is wonderful, and
their clergy have them entirely in their hands. The people might be
tolerant, but the clergy never. And Irish priests are very bitter and
very prejudiced. They say that we have bartered eternity for time, and
that, although we all thrive and do well, we have sold our souls for
earthly prosperity. My mind is made up. Once that bill becomes law you
must find room for me in England. We shall be able to live in peace on
the other side of the Channel."
Another Methodist believed that the poverty of the people was somehow
due to their religion. He knew not precisely why this was the case,
but his observations left him no other conclusion. He instanced
Strabane, the Scots settlement over the border, and although in
Tyrone, yet only divided from Donegal by the river Mourne. "They have
at Strabane an annual agricultural and horticultural exhibition, which
does a great amount of good in educating the people. Last week they
distributed eight hundred pounds in prizes, and there were two
thousand two hundred entries. We have talked about a similar show in
Donegal, but we never do more than talk. We shall never have a show
until we get a sufficient number of Scotsmen to organise it and work
it up. The necessary energy for such a big affair seems to be the
private property of people holding the Protestant faith, for when we
see an energetic Romanist we look upon it as something so remarkable
as to merit investigation, and in nearly every case we find the person
in question is, although Catholic, either Saxon or half-breed. Nearly
all the Papists are Kelts. Is their want of energy due to breed, to
religion, or to both? We hardly know. But I know a man's religion a
mile off, so to speak. Only let me see him at work in a field. His
religion comes out in his action. A Papist never works hard. He seems
to be always doing as little as ever he can. Then he's very much
surprised to find himself so poor, when the hard-working Protestant is
getting on. Presently the Black-mouth gets a farm, while the other
remains a labourer. Then the agitator comes round and says, 'Look how
heretic England favours Protestants. _You_ are the children of the
soil, but who has the farms?' 'Begorra,' says Michael, 'an' that's
thrue, bedad it is now,' and thenceforward he cherishes a secret
animosity against the successful man, instead of blaming his own want
of industry. That's human nature. So he votes for Home Rule, for
anything that promises the land to himself, as the son of the soil. He
looks on the other man as an interloper, and his priest encourages
that view. That is their feeling, as they themselves express it every
day, and are we to believe against the evidence of our senses that
when they have the power to injure us, to drive us out of the country,
by making it too hot to hold us--are we to believe that they will not
exert their power, but on the contrary, will treat us considerably
better than before? That is what English Home Rulers ask us to
believe. That is what Irish Nationalist speakers say in England: they
would be laughed at here. Do not trust these men. They are what the
Scripture calls 'movers of sedition'--and nothing better."
After some search I found a fine young Parnellite, who roundly
denounced the clergy of his own faith as enemies of their country. He
said:--"I _was_ a Home Ruler, but although I hold the same opinion in
theory, I would not at this juncture put it into practice. I am
convinced that it would be bad for us. We are not ripe for
self-government. We want years of training before we could govern
ourselves with advantage. The South Meath election petition finally
convinced me. When I saw how ignorance was used by the clergy for the
furtherance of their own ends, I decided that we were not yet
sufficiently educated to be entrusted with power; and if Home Rule
were now offered to us, and the Home Rule that we ourselves have
advocated, I for one would dread to accept it. We must serve an
apprenticeship to the art of self-government. We must have a Local
Government Bill, and see how we get on. Then it can from time to time
be made larger and more liberal, entrusting us as we grow stronger
with heavier tasks. Give us Home Rule at this moment and you ruin us.
We should have several factions, more intent on getting power and in
damaging each other, than on solving all or any of the very
complicated and difficult questions which would come before them.
There would be no spirit of mutual accommodation such as prevails in
English assemblies. And our troubles would be your troubles. Keep it
back for a few years, and lead us up to Home Rule by easy gradations.
"My anti-Parnellite friends say they will not return the members now
representing them. I believe they will. And if not, then they will
send others of no better social standing, and with no Parliamentary
training at all. They will send worse men, extreme men, men who have
not pledged themselves to the British Government. The pledges of
Dillon and Davitt--what are they worth? Surely nobody is so foolish as
to rely on such 'safeguards' as these.
"I am sure that three-fourths of the educated Catholics of Ireland are
at this moment opposed to Home Rule in any shape or form, but--they
dare not say so. Ireland is a land of tyranny, clerical tyranny.
Ireland will not be free until the clergy withdraw their influence
from politics. If they continue in their present course, there will be
a reaction as education advances, and their last state will be worse
than the first. I know that some of them would gladly drop politics,
but they have to look to their bishops."
A Nationalist tradesman said:--"The Protestants are favoured in every
way. Statistics recently given in the _Freeman_ show that the money
annually paid to the favoured few, who hold appointments which ought
to be open to all, amount to five pounds a head for every Protestant
man, woman, and child in the country. The same favouritism runs
through everything. If a Catholic bids for a field of grass a
Protestant bid is taken, even if lower. I saw it done yesterday."
My friend lost his temper when I asked him to say why the heretic
farmers were thriving while those of the true faith were starving, why
the heretics were clean while the others were dirty. He at last said
that the British Government subsidised all Soupers out of the secret
service money, and making a contemptuous grimace, to express his
opinion of such miscreants, curled up his hand and passed it behind
his back, thus dramatically indicating the underhand way in which the
money is conveyed to the favoured recipients.
These people _will_ believe anything. But who tells them this? And why
do not the clergy undeceive them?
A final Black-mouth must be quoted. He said that the seller of the
standing grass preferred the heretical bid, although lower, "because
he felt more sure of the money," and pointing across the triangular
square, yclept the Diamond, said:--"All those corner-men are Home
Rulers. You never see a Unionist idling the day away at
street-corners. We have no Protestant corner-boys in Donegal, nor
anywhere else, so far as I know." The townsfolk are fairly
industrious, that is, when compared with the people of Southern Irish
towns, but there is a residuum--a Home Rule residuum. It sometimes
happens that jaded men, worn out with overwork, are recommended to go
to some quiet place and to do absolutely nothing. They can't do
nothing, they don't know how to begin. They should go to Donegal. The
place is silent as the tomb, and if they would learn to do nothing
they will there find many eminent professors of the science, who,
having devoted to it the study of a lifetime, have attained a virtuoso
proficiency.
Donegal, August 3rd.
No. 57.--BAREFOOTED AND DILATORY.
"The Ballyshannon foundered on the coast of Cariboo, And down in
fathoms many went the captain and his crew. Down went the owners,
greedy men whom hope of gain allured. O, dry the starting tear, for
they were heavily insured."
And thereby hangs a tale.
Professor Crawford, of Trinity College, Dublin, says that when walking
down Regent Street, London, with William Allingham, then editor of
_Fraser's Magazine_, and a native of this Donegal town, the pair met
Charles Dickens, who advanced with beaming countenance, and taking
both Allingham's hands in his own, said in a hearty voice:
"Well done, Ballyshannon!"
This was in allusion to a recent article written by the _Fraser_
editor, who among his intimate friends and brother litterateurs was
playfully named after his birthplace. W.S. Gilbert was especially fond
of the sonorous appellation, and in the above-quoted Bab Ballad, his
gem of gems, named the ship Ballyshannon in remembrance of Allingham.
The Ballyshannon folks are "going to" erect a memorial to Allingham,
of whose poems they have often heard. They are "going to" advertise
their town, and make its beauties known to the world--some day. They
are "going to" charter a steam dredger, and so improve the harbour,
which is dangerous. They are "going to" utilise the enormous
water-power of the River Erne, which runs to waste from Lough Erne to
the sea. They are "going to" run a few tweed and blanket factories
when they see their way quite clearly. They are "going to" start a
fishery fleet and a number of fish-curing sheds, to give employment to
the poor folks of the district. They need almost everything that man
_can_ need, and they have especial facilities for supplying needs, but
as yet they have lacked time and opportunity. The town is only a
thousand years old, and its inhabitants have not yet had time to look
about them. A number of English anglers stroll about with long salmon
rods, or float their little barks on the broad bosom of the Erne, the
population looking dreamily on from the long bridge over the river,
which, like the Shannon at Athlone, flows through the heart of the
town. Nobody seems to be doing anything, except a few old beggar woman
squalid and frowsy as the mendicant hordes of Tuam, Tipperary,
Limerick, and Galway. The beggars are pertinacious enough for
anything, but theirs is the only enterprise the stranger sees.
Compared with that of Donegal the salmon-fishing seems expensive. The
landlord of the Arran Hotel in that town offers the Eske at
half-a-crown a day, but in Ballyshannon you must pay four pounds a
week and give up all the take except two. Salmon are scarce all over
Ireland this year. Three English fishers on the Erne shared the
universal bad luck, for in three days they had only captured one
five-pounder. The unusual drought has made the water low. The weather
of the past five months has been finer and dryer than any season for
sixty years. Ballyshannon looks dirty and dingy in any weather. It
lacks the smartness, the cleanliness, the width of thoroughfare, which
mark the heretic towns. It lacks the factories, the large shops, the
shipping which would infallibly be to the fore if its inhabitants were
mainly of Teuton origin. On the other hand, the Ballyshannon folks are
religious. They go to mass regularly, and confess themselves at
frequent intervals. The confessional box is their only place to spend
a happy day, and the act of confession, with the following penance,
their pleasantest mode of passing away the time. They are mostly Home
Rulers, and are deferring special effort to better themselves until
the Irish Parliament does away with the necessity. That blessed
institution once fairly settled at College Green will spare them the
pains of enterprise, and will show how large industries can be created
and sustained without capital, without business knowledge, without
technical skill, and for the sole purpose of affording the shiftless
population of Ballyshannon regular wages at the week's end. The
gentlemen who lean over the quaint bridge, with its twelve arches and
sharply-pointed buttresses, are merely waiting for the factories,
which are to spring from the earth fully-equipped at a wave of the
enchanter's hand, to be a blessing to the whole world while fulfilling
their chief mission of finding employment for the people of Ireland.
Meantime the Ballyshannoners are bitterly wroth with England because
she has not hurried up with the desired factories long ages ago. They
smoke thick twist and expectorate into the river, talking moodily of
the selfish Saxon, who instead of looking after them looks after
himself, and praising Tim Healy, whose spare cash is invested in a
factory in Scotland. Tim knows his countrymen; but, although his
cleverness is by them much admired, they do not know how really clever
he is. If they could realise the fact that Tim declines to invest in
Ireland they might admire him still more. The great drawback to Irish
enterprise lies in the fact that Irishmen who have brains enough to
make money have brains enough to invest it out of Ireland. They will
not trust Irishmen, nor will they rely on Irish industry. Ballyshannon
is waiting for the impersonal Somebody or the shadowy Something that
is to come forward and put everything right. Galway is so waiting,
Limerick is so waiting, Cork is so waiting, Westport, Newport, Donegal
are so waiting. It never occurs to them to do something for
themselves. When the suggestion is made they become irate, and
excitedly ask, What could we do? How are we to begin? Where are we to
find the money? Who is to take the first step? They fail to see that
the settlement towns have long since answered these queries, and that
the capacity to do so marks the difference in the breeds. These
hopeless, helpless, Keltic Irishmen are unfit for self-government.
They require the india-rubber tube and the feeding-bottle. They want
to be spoon-fed and patted on the back when they choke. To instance
the Scots settlements is to madden them. These thriving communities
are a standing reproach, and cannot be explained away. Saxon Strabane
flourishes, while Keltic Donegal declines, the latter having all the
advantages of the former with the addition of a harbour and good
fishing grounds. "Look at the condition of the country," say the Home
Rulers. "Behold the poverty of the peasantry," they continually do
cry. The visible nakedness of the land is their chief and most
effective argument. The Unionist answer is conclusive, and of itself
should be enough to demolish the Nationalists. See the Protestant
communities of Ireland,--all, without exception, advancing in
prosperity. They have no advantages which are denied to the
Nationalists. On the contrary, they live in the comparatively bleak
and unfertile North, which by their unceasing industry they have
developed to its fullest extent. They have tilled the ground until it
resembles a garden, they have deepened the rivers, built harbours,
created industries, been in every way successful. And all under
precisely the same laws, the same government. The richest spots of
Ireland, if inhabited by Keltic Irish, are steeped in poverty. The
poorest spots, if inhabited by men of Saxon blood, become fat and
well-liking. The fate of men lies mostly in themselves. This comes out
forcibly in Ireland. Race, breed, heredity, call it what you will, in
Ireland thrusts its influence on you, whether you will or no.
Neighbouring towns, neighbouring farms, neighbouring cottages, present
a series of striking contrasts, ever in favour of the Saxon, ever
against the Kelt. The latter has not yet discovered that the secret
word, the open sesame of the difficulty, the charm which only can give
permanent comfort, is--Work. Nor has his race the spirit of mechanical
invention or industrial enterprise, without which College Green
Parliaments may sit in vain. The pure-blooded Kelt is easily
discouraged, and no man sooner knows when he is beaten. More than
this, he always expects to be beaten, so that he is beaten before he
begins. As a talker he is unequalled, and in this long-eared age, when
the glibbest gabbler is reckoned the greatest man, his agitators have
floated to the front. The Ballyshannon people can talk with the
volubility of a Hebrew cheap Jack, but their jaw-power, like their
water-power, mostly runs to waste. They have the silly suspicion and
the childish credulity of the Donegal rural districts. A fluent
politician said, "Why are all the Protestants Unionists? Perfectly
simple, that. Because they are all well off. There you are. And being
well off, they want no change. That's their selfishness. Now we, who
are not Protestants (thank God), are for the most part poor. Our
living is precarious. We don't know where to look, nor what to do, to
improve our worldly position. We think it likely that an Irish
Parliament would do something for us. In what way? Why, in the
direction of public works and in the building of factories. Also in
the protection of Irish industries. Where would the money come from?
Why, from England, to be sure. And if England wouldn't lend it, plenty
of other nations would; America, for instance. We shall have heaps of
money. Mr. Gladstone has said it, and he is famous as a financier.
There you have the reason why we want Home Rule, while the Protestants
don't. They are well enough off already.
"_Why_ are they well off, you ask? Also easy to answer. They have been
the spoiled children of fortune. They have been petted and pampered by
England for more than two hundred years. And although you will not of
course admit it, yet we know, everybody here knows, that they have
been secretly subsidised by every Tory Government. If they pay their
rents, where do they get the money? From the Tory party. And Tory
landlords give the best farms to Protestants, who having the pick of
the land, ought to be well off. Wherever you go you will find the
Protestants living on good land."
I submitted that authentic records show that Ulster was formerly the
most sterile, barren, unpromising part of Ireland, and that the change
was entirely due to the two centuries of unremitting labour which the
Scots settlers and their descendants had bestowed on the land; but,
waiving this point, I asked him why the Unionist, that is, the
Protestant, party were so much better educated, and why the heretics
were so much cleaner. He had stated that the Black-mouths were
subsidised by the Tory Party. Did the British Government also supply
them with soap?
At this point my friend's explanations became unintelligible, but his
general drift seemed to indicate that the people were too downtrodden,
too much oppressed, were groaning too painfully under the cruel
British yoke, to have the spirit to look after the duties of the
toilet. In other words, the Irish people will wash themselves when
they get Home Rule. At the next election Mr. Gladstone will doubtless
bring forward this aspect of the case as a sop to the soap-making
interest.
Another Ballyshannoner was of a diametrically opposite opinion. "We
are poor because we have no notion of making money by modern methods.
We have always lived on the land, selling our superfluity to pay the
rent, and now that our arrangements are disturbed, we don't know which
way to turn. The blame rests with America, whose competition has so
lowered the price of produce that the farmer's superfluity, that is,
what he does not consume himself, will no longer suffice to pay the
rent. That is a general statement only. Landlords are generally
reasonable, and meet their tenants fairly enough when the tenants are
well-disposed and honest. The tenant-farmers of Ireland have no more
to complain of than the tenant-farmers of England--much less in
fact--but they have an army of agitators, an ignorant English press,
and the G.O.M. on their side. That makes all the difference. We have
occasional cases of unfair landlordism, but they are so rare as to be
the talk of a county or two.
"A Mrs. Hazlitt holds, with her farm, about twenty or thirty acres of
slobland reclaimed from the Atlantic. Slobland is land reclaimed from
the sea. This piece is on Donegal Bay. It was protected by a great
dyke after the Dutch style. But the Atlantic is sometimes angry, and
then he becomes unmanageable. He was ill-tempered one night (being
troubled with wind), and he just washed down the dyke and inundated
the reclaimed meadows, upon, which I have seen the most beautiful
crops. The landlord, the Reverend James Hamilton, a Protestant rector,
insists on rent being paid for this washed-away land. He does not
rebuild the dyke, and the land lies waste--the widow paying rent for
acres of useless salt marsh. That is pointed to by all the malcontents
in Donegal as a specimen of landlordism, and Protestant landlordism,
and more especially reverend Protestant landlordism. Nobody but a
parson would exact the rent. These isolated examples are cited to
bring discredit on Protestant landlords in general.
"This town is asleep, and it will not awake till the last Judgment. In
1885 we had a manufacturer from Belfast looking about for the best
place for a big cloth mill on the river. The town was in a ferment of
excitement, and everybody began to wonder what he would do with his
additional income. The shop-keepers expected that their customers
would have twice the money to spend in future, and the working folks
began to be cocky with their employers, saying that they would get
much better wages at the great factory. Then Mr. Gladstone brought out
his '86 bill, and the Belfast man drew in his horns. He told me that
he would not risk a farthing in any speculative venture while the
threat of Home Rule was held over us. He was quite right. The
Ballyshannon men were relieved from the trouble of deciding how they
would spend their surplus money, and they ranged themselves on the
bridge or at their usual corners, where you may now see them, propping
up the old houses with their lazy backs, and discussing the wrongs of
Ireland. What they would do without their supposed, wrongs nobody
knows. In English hands this would be a money-making place. We have
enormous advantages of situation, and the water power is almost
unequalled in Ireland. Yet from here to Belleek, a distance of four
miles, there is nothing whatever being done with it.