the conclusions I have formed in this and the three following
articles. In connection with the Home Rule Bill, we have heard much of
the "aspirations of a people." Mr. Gladstone has taken up the cry, and
his subservient followers at once brought their speeches and facial
expressions into harmony with the selected sentiment. These
anti-English Englishmen would fain pose as persons in advance of their
time, determined to do justice though the heavens should fall. They
agree with Mr. Labouchere that John Bull is a tyrant, a robber, and a
hypocrite, and that it is high time justice should be done to Ireland.
As no substantial injustice exists, it is necessary to fall back on
sentiment, and to quote the "aspirations of a people." The desire for
a system of Irish autonomy is praised as a manifestation of patriotism
which in all ages of the world has been honoured by worthy men. The
English supporters of Mr. Gladstone, with their assumption of superior
virtue, their Pharasaic We are not as other men, nor even as these
Tories, would have us believe that with the granting of self-rule
Ireland will be satisfied, that the gratification of a laudable
sentiment is all that is now required to bind together the peoples in
an infrangible Union of Hearts, and that peace and prosperity will at
once follow in the wake of this merely sentimental concession.
The great mass of the Irish electorate know nothing of all this. Tap
them wherever you will, north, south, east, or west, and you find one
dominant thought--that of pecuniary gain. They know nothing of the
proposed bill, and are totally incapable of comprehending its scope
and effect. The peasantry of Ireland are actuated by motives entirely
different from those affecting the rural constituencies of England.
The Briton is proud of his country, believes in its might, justice,
supremacy; and despite occasional grumbling is satisfied that the
powers that be will do him right in the long run. The Irish peasant is
essentially inimical to England. He is always "agin the
Government"--that is, the rule of England. He regards the landlord as
trebly an enemy--firstly as a heretic, secondly as the representative
of British rule, and last, but by no means least, as the person to
whom rent is due. He desires to abolish the landlord, not in the
interests of religion--I speak now of the peasantry, and not the
clergy--and not in the interests of patriotism, for if a Dublin
Parliament were to cost him sixpence, the priests themselves could
hardly drag him to the poll; but purely and simply to avoid any
further payment of what he regards as the accursed impost on the land.
Phillip Fahy, the leading light of Carnaun, near Athenry, is exactly
typical of rural Irish Patriotism. "Did ye hear of the Home Rule Bill?
What does it mane, at all, at all? Not one o' us knows more than that
lump o' stone ye sit on. Will it give us the land for nothin', for
that's all we hear? We'll be obliged av ye could explain it a thrifle,
for sorra one but's bad off, an' Father O'Baithershin says 'Howld yer
whist,' says he 'till ye see what'll happen,' says he. Will we get the
bit o' ground widout rint, yer honner's glory?" Mr. Tynan, of Monivea,
said that his landlord was liberal and good, and admitted that his
land was not too highly rented, but, said he, "We have no objection to
do better still." The run on the Irish Post Office Savings Banks at
once illustrates the patriotism of the people and their confidence in
the proposed Dublin Parliament. It was well known and understood, so
far as the poorer classes are capable of understanding anything, that
the floating balance of the Post Office Banks would constitute the
only working capital of the Irish Legislature. Here was an
opportunity for self-sacrifice. Here was a chance of manifesting the
faith animating the lovers of their country. But at the same time it
was made known that the Post Office would pass from the British
control to that of the Irish people's chosen representatives. It might
have been supposed that the electors would rejoice thereat with
exceeding great joy, and that in order to show their trust in an Irish
Parliament they would increase their deposits, and at considerable
personal inconvenience refrain from withdrawals. Nothing of the kind.
The "aspirations of a people" were at once strongly defined, but this
time not in the direction of patriotism. It availed not to urge upon
them the argument that the four millions of the Post Office Savings
Banks were absolutely necessary to the successful administration of an
Irish Parliament. In patriotic Dublin the run on the Post Office was
tremendous. The master of a small sub-office told me that the
withdrawals over his counter had for some time amounted to L200 per
week, and that they were increasing to L70 per day. There was not
enough gold in Dublin to meet the demands, and cash was being
forwarded from London. The patriots who had no money deposited in the
Post Office made no secret of their indignation, stigmatising their
fellow-countrymen as recreants and traitors, but without perceptible
effect. The Dublin Savings Bank became the trusted depositary of the
money. This institution is managed by an association of Dublin
merchants, not for profit, but for the encouragement of thrift, and
the confidence reposed in them was doubtless due to the fact that the
directors, on the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, had publicly
announced their intention, on the bill becoming law, to pay twenty
shillings in the pound and at once to close the bank. The patriot
depositors were not deterred by this announcement, nor by the
directors' letter to Mr. Gladstone, in which they declared that their
determination to wind up the affairs of the bank was due to the fact
that in the interest of their depositors they felt themselves unable
to accept the security of an Irish Legislature. Patriotism would
surely have resented this imputation. But Nationalism in its present
phase is nothing more than selfish cupidity and lust of gain. This is
made abundantly manifest by the freely-uttered sentiments of all
classes of the Nationalist party. The first answer I received to an
inquiry as to what advantages would be derived from a patriot
Parliament was elicited from an ancient Dubliner, whose extraordinary
credulity was equal to anything afterwards met with in the rural
districts:--"The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv
us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay sojers to grind us down, we'll
put into our own pockets, av you plaze." The complaint about the
British Government veto on Irish mining, which I fondly believed to be
sporadic, proved to be chronic, universal. Here again the notion of
easily acquired wealth was the impulse, and not the pure and
self-denying influence of patriotism. "The British Government won't
allow us to work the gold mines in the Wicklow mountains. Whin we get
the bill every man can take a shpade, an', begorra! can dig what he
wants. The Phaynix Park is all cram-full o' coal that the Castle folks
won't allow us to dig, bad scran to them! Whin we get the bill we'll
sink them mines an' send the Castle to blazes." The coal under the
Phoenix Park is a matter of pious belief with every back-slum
Dubliner. The gold of the Wicklow mountains is proverbial all over
Ireland. There is not a nobleman's demesne that does not cover untold
wealth in some shape or form. It may be gold, silver, copper, lead, or
only coal or iron. But it is there, and the people of the
neighbourhood want an Irish Parliament in order that the treasures may
be turned into money. The more intelligent Nationalists foster these
beliefs, although they know them to be without foundation. They know
that the treasures do not exist in paying quantities, and also that if
they did exist their fellow-countrymen are too lazy to dig them up.
The Nationalist orators never rely on patriotic sentiment. They
promise the land for nothing. Mr. William O'Brien has unceasingly
offered as a bribe the promise of prairie rents for the farmers, but
Tim Healy went one better when at Limerick he said that "The people of
this country never ought to be satisfied so long as a single penny of
rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of Ireland." Well might
Sir George Trevelyan say that Irish agitators have done much to
demoralise the country, and that in many parts of Ireland they gained
their livelihood by criminal agitation. The same authority tells us
that "an Irish Parliament will be independent of the Parliament of
this country, but will be dependent on the votes of the small farmers,
who have been taught that rent is robbery." That is a precise
statement of the position so far as the agricultural voters are
concerned. Their patriotism is nothing more nor less than a sure and
certain hope of pecuniary advantage. The green flag of Ireland has no
charms for them. The ancient glories of Hibernia are sung to them in
vain. They care not for the Onward march to Freedom. They will make no
sacrifices on the shrine of their country. The subscriptions furnished
by the Irish peasantry for the furtherance of the cause amount to
almost nothing, although extorted partly by compulsion and partly by
the hope of future profit. The following facts will show how
spontaneous is their patriotism. At a Sunday meeting at Gurteen in
1887, the Very Reverend Canon O'Donohoe in the chair, it was resolved,
"That a collection for the defence of Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien be
made during the ensuing week in this locality, and that not less than
sixpence be accepted from any person. _Anyone not subscribing will be
considered not in sympathy with the Branch._" Those only who know
Ireland well will be able to appreciate the terrible significance of
the last sentence of this resolution, which for the information of the
peasantry was made public in the Nationalist _Sligo Champion_. A
similar incentive to patriotism seems to have been required by the
Kilshelan Branch, for at another Sunday Meeting, the Reverend Father
Dunphy in the chair, it was unanimously resolved, "That all members
who do not pay in subscriptions on or before the next meeting, which
will be held on the last Sunday of this month, shall have their names
published and posted on the chapel gate for two consecutive Sundays."
This quotation is from the _Munster Express_, published in Limerick.
At a meeting reported by the _Kerry Sentinel_ "the conduct of several
members, who had not renewed their subscriptions, was strongly
condemned, the reverend president, Father T. Enright, giving orders to
have a list, with their names, sent to him before the next meeting."
The chapel doors are used as instruments of boycotting. The priest
sits in judgment on all who are not sufficiently patriotic. The people
are compelled to subscribe to the cause, whether they like it or not.
These cases could be multiplied to infinity. They not only give an
excellent illustration of the conduct of the Irish clergy in political
affairs, but they also furnish a curious commentary on the enthusiasm
which is supposed to mark the Aspirations of a People, who, as Mr.
Gladstone might say are "rightly struggling to be free." I have
conversed with hundreds of Irish farmers and I never yet met one who
was willing to sacrifice a sixpence on "the altar of his country," or
to trust an Irish Parliament with his own property, or to invest a
penny on purely Irish security. He loves his ease, no man likes it
better, and No Rent means less exertion. Mr. O'Doherty, of County
Donegal, a Catholic Home Ruler, said the landlords were all right now
under compulsion, but what the tenantry demanded was to be released
entirely from the landlords' yoke. The farmers, he said, cared nothing
for Home Rule, but the Nationalists had preached prairie value, and
the people expected to drive out the landowners and Protestants. Mr.
John Cook, of Londonderry, a Protestant Home Ruler and a man of
culture, did not claim patriotism for the Nationalists, and
unconsciously put his finger on the real incentive when he said:--"The
landlords will be wronged under the present bill. It is a bad bill, an
unjust bill, and will do more harm than good. England should have a
voice in fixing the price of the land, for if the matter be left to
the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants were
buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found that
their two-and-three-quarter per cent. interest came lower than their
rent. But they have quite ceased to buy, because they expect the Irish
Legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land
for nothing." Patriotism had meanwhile received another sop. Mr. Healy
advised the farmers to think twice before they bought their land, and
hinted that their patience was likely to be well rewarded. Father J.
Corcoran at Mullahoran, when consulted by a body of tenant farmers
whose landlord offered to sell, distinctly advised them not to
purchase, and gave a practical instruction on the subject, in which he
endeavoured to prove that seventeen or eighteen years' purchase was at
present unworthy of consideration, and advising the greatest caution
in buying at all under present circumstances. The farmers' conception
of Nationalism is plunder and confiscation. They vote for Home Rule
because they thereby expect to make money, to become freeholders,
landlords themselves, in short. They are taught that they have an
inherent right to the land, and that an Irish Parliament will restore
them their own. Father B. O'Hagan, addressing a meeting in company
with William O'Brien, said:--"We have two classes of landlords, in
brief. We have the royal scoundrels who took the land of our
forefathers. I ask any of those noble ruffians to show me the title by
which they lay claim to the soil of my ancestors. Then we have the
landlords who have purchased their estates in the Land Courts. But
they bought stolen goods, and they knew that the land was stolen. We
must get rid of the landlords." Paddy is perfectly safe. The landlords
who claim in descent and those who buy in the open market are equally
denounced. Let him support the Nationalist party, and the land becomes
his own. He does so, and his motive is by the unthinking called
patriotism and by Mr. Gladstone the Aspirations of a People.
There are of course other classes of Nationalists, but in comparison
with the immense preponderance of rural voters they do not count for
much. Mr. McGregor, of Anglesea Street, Dublin, once an earnest
Gladstonian, said:--"The corner-men are Home Rulers because they want
to spend what they never earned, and the farmers because they hope to
get the land for nothing." The Dublin hotel-keepers are mostly Home
Rulers, and the proprietor of Jury's, next door to the proposed House
in College Green, is supposed to be consumed with patriotic fire. The
hotel has recently been refitted. The Dublin shopkeepers, "those of
the largest size," are strangely lacking in patriotism, and mostly
support the Union. Patriotism is claimed for the Nationalist members,
who, according to Nationalist sheets, were lifted from bog-holes,
tripe shops, and small whiskey shops to decide the destinies of
empires, to revel in comparative luxury, to enjoy a certain social
distinction, to exchange their native bogs for the British metropolis,
and to draw a salary beyond their wildest dreams. These questionable
gentlemen, with the horse's tongue and cow's tail cutters, the
firebrand priests and landlord-shooters, the moonlight marauders who
shoot old women and children in the legs, burn the haystacks of their
neighbours, refuse coffins and decent burial for the dead, apply the
fiendish tortures of boycotting to innocent women and children,
refusing them the means of subsistence, and poisoning their water
supply with human filth--these _are_ patriots. Only their patriotism
must cost them nothing, It must be cultivated at the expense of
others. The patriots subscribe only under compulsion, and yet hope to
make a profit by the transaction. As of a certain party of old, it may
be said of them, "License they mean when they cry Liberty." Plunder
they mean when they cry Patriotism. The sober and industrious portion
of the Irish people, the pick of every part of Ireland, being opposed
to Nationalism, are denied the virtue of patriotism. The merchants and
manufacturers of Dublin and Belfast, the leading professional men of
Ireland, the most learned scholars of her great University, her great
soldiers, White, Wolseley, Roberts, her greatest living authors, the
whole of her Protestant clergy of whatever sect, with their
congregations, the pith and marrow of everything that is strong,
stable, cultured, enlightened, prescient, must be pronounced
unpatriotic--if Nationalism is Patriotism. Contrary to all human
experience and to the course and constitution of nature, the people of
England are asked to believe that love of their native land and desire
to do the best for the commonweal, are the sole possession of the
ignorant and rowdy classes of Irishmen, and notwithstanding the
undeniable fact that Nationalist Irishmen of every colour accuse the
Nationalist members of self-seeking, and of absolute indifference to
everything: outside their own interests, we are asked to give to them
exclusively the honour due to men who sacrifice all for their country
and care for nothing but her welfare. Gladstonians themselves, in the
deepest depths of their credulity, cannot in their hearts believe in
Nationalist patriotism, except, perhaps, such as that of Mr. Kelly, of
Athenry, who said, "I'm a Home Ruler out and out. The counthry's
within a stone-throw of hell, and we may as well be in it altogether."
Birmingham, August 11th.
No. 60.--LAND HUNGER: ITS CAUSE, EFFECT, AND REMEDY.
That Irish Nationalism is not Patriotism has been demonstrated by an
appeal to admitted facts. The farmers hope to be relieved from payment
of rent, the labourers hope to be employed in the mining of treasure
at remunerative wages, the agitators hope for place and power, and
everyone who has nothing hopes in the general confusion to make off
with something. There is, in short, a shrewd popular notion that the
foundering of the British ship of state would yield good wreckage. The
false lights have done excellent service. Dillon, Davitt, O'Brien.
Healy, and the rest of the would-be wreckers are shivering with
excitement at the prospect of the crash which they fondly believe to
be imminent. The helmsman is under their orders--will he be heaved
overboard before he has done his work? If so, farewell to hope of
plunder, farewell to hope of religions domination, to freehold farms
for nothing, to gold mines, to every hope that made life pleasant, to
all the fatuous beliefs that are the basis of Irish Nationalism. It
has been shown that "patriotic" subscriptions could only be raised by
threats, that the names of non-subscribers were posted on chapel
gates, that resolutions fixing the minimum were passed, with a rider
to the effect that persons not subscribing would be considered "out of
sympathy," and that this fund was for the defence of the patriots
Dillon and O'Brien, who afterwards ran away. The rush of the "patriot"
depositors on the Post Office Savings Banks so soon as it was known
that in the event of Home Rule the floating balance would constitute
the working capital of the new Parliament, and would therefore be in
the hands of brother "patriots," has been adduced as a fair measure of
patriotic sincerity, and endless minor examples might have been given.
We might have mentioned Delany, the principal clothier and outfitter
of intensely patriotic Limerick, who had not a yard of Irish tweed in
his stores; or the Dungannon folks, who think foul scorn of their own
coal, and persist in buying the English product at double the cost; or
Mr. Timony, of "patriotic Donegal," might have been quoted.
"Irishmen," said the great draper, "will not wear Donegal tweed. But
for England we should have no market at all." The patriots will not
"part." "I'm sorry for you," said the kind old lady. "_How much_ are
you sorry?" said the tramp. Tried by this test, Irish patriotism comes
out very small. If "patriot" members had to live on the voluntary
offerings of their constituencies, the trade would expire of
inanition. The members would return to their bogs, their tripe shops,
their shebeens, and patriotism would become a lost art. Irishmen will
applaud with enthusiasm. They like a red-hot patriotic speech. But,
like the crowd listening to the harp and fiddle at the street corner,
they begin to shuffle off when the bag comes round.
Irish land hunger is easy to understand and simple to define. The bulk
of the population are agricultural, and closely wedded to custom.
Their fathers lived on the land and by the land, and they expect to do
likewise. _Saeva paupertas, et avitus apto cum lare fundus._ Their
ideas of existence are inseparably connected with the land. Whatever
knowledge they have relates to the land. Their farming skill is very
limited; indeed, it may almost be said that they have none beyond that
possessed by savages--but it is their only possession. They have no
turn for mechanics. The rural Irishman is uneducated, and knows little
beyond what he sees around him. So far as his experience goes, to be
without land is to be without the one means of livelihood. The English
small farmer is differently situated. If farming will not pay he has
other resources. He can migrate to fifty towns having factories or
great public works. And besides this, the Saxon is not crippled by an
ignorant conservatism and a congenital inability to adapt himself to
changed circumstances. Paddy is content with little, if he have his
ease. He loves to put in the seed and then to sit down and wait for
the crop, varying the proceedings with fairs and festive gatherings.
Such is his conception of life. The ding-dong regularity of factory
work does not suit him, so he clings to the land, which provides him
with a bare subsistence, and that is all he wants. No ambition to be
more luxurious than his father troubles him at all. Short spells of
work, and long spells of play, are ensured to the fortunate holder of
land. This is Paddy's conception of Paradise. Suppose the land held
were at first sufficient to maintain his family. The boys grow up,
and, according to custom, the paternal farm is divided, in the next
generation again subdivided, until at last the amount of land
remaining to each family is insufficient for its maintenance. Then the
district becomes congested. The poverty of the people is attributed to
the landlords, who are denounced as non-resident, notwithstanding the
demonstrations of an affectionate tenantry, who now and then shoot one
or two, _pour encourarger les autres_. If the people have food they
have little or no money. The agitator comes and promises No Rent, the
opening of gold mines and mighty factories, paying liberal wages,
under the fostering wing of an Irish Parliament. The people are
ignorant and credulous. They are, however, certain as to their own
poverty, and they desire a change. The Roman Catholics regard
themselves as the chosen people, the true sons of the soil, but they
see that most of the great landowners are Protestant, that the
Protestant farmers often hold uncommonly good land, and that if these
were once dispossessed the righteous might again flourish as green bay
trees. For while Papal Ireland is largely rock and bog, the heretical
portion is reclaimed and tilled, the bogs drained, the primeval
boulders rolled away, broken up, and made into fences. All this is
tempting. Irish land hunger is foreshadowed in the story of Naboth and
his vineyard.