A CURE FOR IRELAND.
In connection with the above, I will here print for the first time a
paper written long ago on the now rife subject of a cure for Irish
misery; at all events partially. Ireland has been with me a theme for
many kinds of literature; from that usual sort of authorship, letters in
the _Times_, to journalising on occasion, balladising in or out of
season, and now and then a political squib or graver article. I have
known that hapless land well in old days from Giant's Causeway to Cape
Clear; have been a guest in several noted homes, as with geological
Enniskillen and astronomical Crampton; know the natives well, and how
they have been taught by priests and demagogues to hate the Sassenach,
and, like most well-meaning men, who, after every kind effort, find
themselves utterly misunderstood, am (as a merely private and quite
unprejudiced politician) entirely at a loss to know how to please that
impracticable people, or to mend their miserable condition. However,
that in my authorial fashion I _have_ tried, let the following paper
prove; written and published nearly thirty years ago.
* * * * *
"Nations think and feel and act much as individuals do; for, after all,
the largest crowd of men is, only an aggregate of units. If contempt
provokes a man to anger, and avowed neglect forces him into indolence
and hopelessness, we shall see the same result in masses as we do in
single persons; and the causes which may have generated hatred and
despair will everywhere and everywhen find cures in their contraries,
honour being accorded in the place of contempt, and kindly care instead
of cold indifference. Thus, the far too common phrase, 'No Irish need
apply,' has doubtless wrought infinite ill-feeling; and the Levite's
chilling rule of 'passing by on the other side' evermore arouses
indignation nationally no less than individually.
"Now, it cannot be denied in an ethnological sense that the Celtic
nature is peculiarly sensitive; any more than it can be denied
historically that its good feelings have been too often systematically
crushed, and its generous impulses seared. If the Teutonic mind
illustrates in sterner traits the manhood of human intelligence, the
Celt shows its gayer youthfulness, if not indeed the lighter phases of
its reckless childhood: and it has been a second nature for the Saxon to
hold mastery over the Celt, as a weaker race is everywhere subject to a
strong one. Moreover, opposition in religious creed has had its evil
influences, scarcely yet extinct, however caustically such a cure may in
vain have been hitherto attempted.
"We must take nations as we find them: the Keltoi and the Sakai, always
at contrariety, do not seem to have altered in character from the
earliest prehistoric reports of old Herodotus even to our own times,
more than three thousand years. Racial peculiarities are known to
survive the actual transplantation to new lands; see in especial the
Irish of America; as the Roman poet has it, 'Those who cross the sea
may change their sky, but not their mind.' Therefore it is that a
far-seeing and philosophical statesmanship should ever deal
specifically--and as if individually--with national character; for
example, if we would convert the typical Irish mind from (must we say
it?) hatred of England to the love of her, we must commence as we would
in domestic life, by somehow managing to please our too sensitive
sister, by showing her our sympathies, and by treating her with honour
instead of contemptuous indifference; thus investing her with 'the
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'"
It is a quarter of a century since the writer of this paper published in
the course of a book of his, now somewhile out of print ("The Rides and
Reveries of Æsop Smith"), the following short chapter, on page 322, here
reproduced textually. It was headed "The Unsunned Corner," and runs
thus:--
Ireland came upon the _tapis_, and Æsop said, when his turn came to
speak: One of my fields, on the wrong slope of a hill-side and
surrounded by trees, scarcely ever sees the sun; and by consequence its
crops are short when arable, and when in pasture its grass sour, and the
hay musty.
And why then, he went on to say, shouldn't Ireland have a palace--a
Balmoral at Killarney, or another Osborne at Killiney?
Poor Erin is that unsunned corner of our Empire's field; and it seems a
thousand pities that the kingdom of Ireland should be denied some such
special royal home as is even found rather superfluously at the camp at
Aldershot. What if one of those lovely arbutus-wooded islands at the
foot of M'Gillicuddy's Reeks were fitted with a Swiss cottage for the
Queen? Or if Bantry Bay supplied its marble for a royal castle near Cape
Clear? Or if the railroad to Galway were supplied with a gilt carriage
or two to waft Majesty and children to some western palace in Connemara?
Think you such gleams of sunshine wouldn't fertilise that poor neglected
field, nor make its crops abundant, and its peasants happy? Think you
that the gold mine of Royal bounty, and the graciousness of Royal
favour, would not work a blessed change for grateful Ireland? Try it, O
good Queen!--a Viceregal Court, excellent as ours is now, is but a sorry
substitute for the real Majesty, nickel for silver, electrotyped plate
instead of the true golden buffet: not without snobbism too, and
toadyism and vulgarism and other detestable small heresies. If but once
in three years Victoria's rural Court were housed in an Irish palace,
her presence would do more for happiness, prosperity, and patriotism
than all of these that Maynooth grants have ever hindered.
* * * * *
Thus Æsop Smith in 1858 delivered his mind on the matter. It is by no
means pretended or supposed that a palatial residence would of itself
cure Irish evils and misfortunes; but it might be a step towards this
good result, and at any rate would remove one very allegible accusation
of neglect: Ireland should enjoy the like privileges with her sister
kingdoms England and Scotland: and however inadequate, _per se_, such a
simple prescription may seem as "Æsop Smith" suggests, his advice
contains at least one very obvious and easy cure for Irish disaffection;
and I am not aware that either by pamphlet or in Parliament it has yet
been seriously mooted. The Celts are a folk of essentially loyal
instincts; but (much as Americans often are heard to complain in their
own behalf) they have, as an independent nation, no seen and known
object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic
court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of
their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the
Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of
English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen
herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853:
yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must
have been, the enthusiastic reception he met with some sixty years ago
at the hands of his Irish subjects is still remembered after two
generations with a grateful and effusive loyalty. Imagine, if only from
such an example as this, what might be the beneficent effect of our good
Queen periodically visiting her kingdom of Ireland, and permanently
having there some such happy homestead as Osborne or Balmoral; if also,
in her absence, one of the princes of our Royal house represented his
Imperial mother as Viceroy; and if in their train the tide of
aristocracy, wealth, and fashion flowed in upon impoverished Ireland. It
is not easy to calculate the advantages of such a social revolution as
this; and surely, in spite of many obvious objections, such an
experiment might be worth the trial.
A beginning might avowedly be made in the right direction, by building
or purchasing some suitable castle as a permanent palace for Ireland's
Queen; say, for old association's sake, at Tara, if anyhow
adaptable,--or any other picturesque neighbourhood connected with some
ancient chieftain of the Irish quasi-heptarchy; wherein a Royal
Establishment might be commenced, in present proof of the serious
intention as to an early future residence: the mind of the people might
be thus prepared for the speedy coming of their Sovereign and her Court,
and would be softened and gratified by the evident confidence and
good-feeling thus shown; as well as their condition materially benefited
by the necessary expenditure that must be laid out locally in labour and
materials, giving work to the needy, and so helping to cure Erin's chief
disease,--poverty to the verge of famine. As to actual
life-peril,--every due precaution being taken,--the happy result of such
a humanising experiment might fairly be left to the generous native
loyalty of a kindly treated people, and to the gracious guardianship of
God's good providence. I am sure that present Royalty would neither be
boycotted nor burked. We remember with what generous cordiality our
Prince and Princess were received by all classes and creeds in their
recent brave visit to Ireland.
* * * * *
I cannot honestly pretend to have always taken quite so amiable a view
of Celtic matters. I plead guilty to having more than once assailed in
print Daniel O'Connell and his kind, and to have written a pair of once
famous poetical fly-leaves, "Erin go bragh" and "Hurrah for Repeal!"
copies of which (beyond my archived ones) can now only be found in the
Ballad Collection of the British Museum, which I used to supply with my
Sibyllines, at a chief librarian's request: I forget the name, but he
collected such placards. I fear the two above were not very
complimentary: but what can one do for a perverse people, who complain
of it as a wrong that they are excused the Queen's taxes? Also I wrote
certain famous letters on Ireland, especially four long ones signed
"T.," in the _Times_ of January 1847.
* * * * *
In Ireland I have caught a salmon at Killarney and cooked it too on an
arbutus stake; I have bruised my shins at the Giant's Causeway; I have
been an honoured guest at classical Florence Court; have picked up
native gold at Avoca; have done the Round Towers, possibly Phoenician
Baal-temples; have handled Brian Boroime's harp; and have been shocked
everywhere by the poverty and degradation of that musical barbarian's
miserable because idle people. What can be done for those who will not
help themselves?