Paraguay on Shannon : the price of a political priesthood ; remarks on policy and proceedings of a ribbonman board and a royal arranged commission

Front matter

THE PRICE OF A POUTICAL PRIESTHOOD

THE PRICE OF A POLITICAL PRIESTHOOD

REMARKS ON POLICY AND PROCEED- INGS OF A RIBBONMAN BOARD AND A ROYAL ARRANGED COMMISSION

Introduction

A WHITE HOTTENTOT MISSION— CASTLE CLERI- CALISM — JACOBIN CLERGY — FISHERY REVIVED BY DUKE OF ABERCORN— BLACK- HOLE SCHOOLS AND RICH CATHEDRALS.

" I advise a boycott rigorous and complete."

Mr. Conor O'Kelly, M.P., member of Commission.

"Join us in overthrowing the ascendency of the classes."

Most Rev. Bishop O'Donnell, member of Commission.

Religious reasons or pretexts are intruded into most matters which have any relation to Ireland ; and certain personages, who feel themselves set in unwelcome light, will be sure to accuse me of currying favour in some quarter by reprehensible accusations against the religious dogmas or the religious priests of my Church. Nothing can be more unfounded. I believe in that Church in every point, and accept her teaching from Nicasa to Trent, and from Trent to the Vatican. I revere the religious priests of Catholicism. I write exclusively against the domination of a political sacerdotalism, that perpetual curse ol Christendom, nowhere more a curse than in Ireland, and never more a curse than now. The political priesthood sold the high kings to the Norman, and the Parliament to the Castle. Its nation-killing greed for pelf and power has become neither less sordid nor less hurtful since a misguided papacy,* following the

* By abolishing the ancient status and reducing the Irish Catholic Church to a " mission district " three-quarters of a century ago, the Pope placed Irish Catholics, priests and laymen, under the arbitrary absolutism of the Propaganda Congregation, just like Mongolia or Borneo. I shall make some detailed reference to this matter in the course of the following pages. Like a good Catholic, I recognise

X INTRODUCTION.

inspiration of anti-Irish politicians, degraded the canonical Church of Catholic Ireland into a servile province of a Foreign Missions Board, and made the pious heirs of Patrick and Columba something like White Hottentots among the Catholic peoples of Europe.

The political priesthood can utilise the needs of the body almost as well as the aspirations of the soul. It can manipulate charity as adroitly as faith. While sincere and stainless ministers of religion shudder at the political desecration of the sanctuary, a score of petty Hildebrands parade with ostentation their profitable alliance with the mendaciousness of platforms and the trickery of Cabinets. The rude honesty of a popular tribune has voiced before now what many think, but few dare to utter. In the words of Mr. Michael Davitt : — " A conscientious regard for religion, indeed ! No, it is not that. It is the eternal hungering after secular influence and temporal power, the assumption of authority to dictate to laymen what they shall think and do in the affairs of the nation." The vast structure of ascendency which the hierocrats the validity of the revolution, and, like a good Catholic, I deplore it. Of course, I cannot explain to the Sacristy Parliamentarians and the Ribbon Lodges that a good Catholic can condemn the historical acts of popes ; but perhaps an illustration from those good Catholics, the reverend fathers of the Jesuit Society — so orthodox in dogma and so pernicious in politics — may help Sir Christopher Nixon or Baron Palles. In the well-known Jesuit periodical The Month, in its November issue, p^ge 547, we can read the following condemnation of the Pope who started the great schism of the West, Urban VI. : " It is clear from the documents that we have that the opposition cardinals would never have varied from their original choice had it not been that Urban VI. behaved, it must be acknowledged, simply like a lunatic, and made them fear for their lives and careers under his despotic rule." Shall I say that the degradation of the ancient Church of the West to the class of coolie and negro missions was also a piece of " despotism " worthy of " a lunatic " ? So meanly did the advisers of the Vatican estimate the religious priesthood of Ireland.

INTRODUCTION, xi

have been helped by politicians to erect on a basis of poor assistance is almost as notorious as their masterpiece, the organisation of ignorance. They are as supreme on the Board of Subsidies as on the Commission of Investigation, in the Relief Committee as in the Ribbon Lodge. Last century it used to be said of a certain Under-Secretary at Dublin Castle that Ireland was ruled "by Larcom and the police." To-day we say, " by Sir Antony and the blessed clergy."

Nor let us forget that the Irish political priesthood has come to be entirely convinced of the legitimacy of its usurpation, of the sanctity of its domination. Although a similar incubus has been shaken off by every Catholic nation of universal civilisation, by every Catholic land that was determined not to die, the priestly tyrants of Ireland not only teach to their starveling flocks the dogma of sacerdotal omnipotence, but they believe it themselves. Yet Irish Catholics could convince them of the immensity of their error but for that creature of sinister influence and example the accommodating Protestant. It is Dublin Castle which has fortified the political sacristy, the edifice of ill from which Ireland sees but two exits, the pauper graveyard and the emigrant quay. Both are congested districts, and the only ones in the country.

In other countries Catholic Churchmen are conservative of order and property. From end to end of the Continent they are nowhere to be found inciting " the toiling multitudes to overthrow the ascendency of the classes," or proclaiming that landed estate is incompatible with human sympathies. In Ireland alone they are the firebrands of the populace ; frustrating every reform by more and more exaggerated demands ; glorying in intimidation ; stimulating the boycott and the cattle-drive ; applauding the repudiation of contracts ; recruiting and directing lawless xii INTRODUCTION.

confederations, excommunicate of Christendom, bound by secret passwords and sectarian oaths, ripe for outrage in the present, and sprung from a past red with ten thousand assassinations. Yet to such hands has EngHsh poHtical faction abandoned the distribution of public bounties, the exercise of pubHc authority, the development of national mendicancy, and the perpetuation of national decay.

The Congested Districts organisation, that misleading name, has been used to promote popular dependence upon the hierocrats and to envenom popular passions against the Irish gentry. " The landlords have never done anything for Ireland." That is the parrot-cry of half the pulpiteers. Considering that the incendiary clerics have been sowing hate between owners and occupiers for nearly a century, it may be acknowledged that they have often made impossible both benejfits and co-operation. But thousands of Irish landlords exhausted their last shilling to feed their tenantry in the famine years, though their only reward from English political intelligence was to be the Encumbered Estates Acts. Even to-day the only great success of the Congested Districts Board, as claimed by itself, the boasted fishery in the Gweedore and Glenties district, owes its success in finding a market to an Irish landlord who, culmination of wickedness, is also a peer and a duke, assisted by a London fish merchant ! I quote from the evidence before the Commission of Mr. J. F. O'Donnell, county councillor of Donegal, who bears this testimony to the immense benefit from this co-operation : —

" I am pleased to say that the fishmarket on the coast of the county has much improved for the past ten years, which is principally due to Mr. John L. Sayer, of London. In 1895 the price paid at Burtonport was very small. The following year His Grace the Duke of Abercorn visited the district. He witnessed not less than seventy boats lying at the Burtonport Pier, all having good catches, but no market for the fish. He immediately telegraphed to Mr. John L.

INTRODUCTION. xiii

Sayer, of Billingsgate, London, requesting him to appoint a representative, who would take the fish from the boats, and have them forwarded without delay. Mr. Sayer took the matter up at once ; sent his representative, Mr. John Guthrie, who went to work, and expended over ;^3,ooo on the erection of fish-curing stations and kippering houses. Mr. Sayer then formed a company which is known as the Donegal Fishing Company. This company had nets working this year value for ^2,000, boats value ^5,000, stock value ^3,000, and the amount of cash paid out by them for lobsters alone from I St May to 30th September exceeds ^^900. The total amount of cash paid for fish, wages, and incidental expenses by this company in the last two and a half years is ^^27,360."

Is not this good work by an Irish landlord and an English merchant ? Yet the clerics of the Congested Board want to rouse " the toiling masses " against such, and teach their ignorant people that " a landlord is incapable of human feeling." By the way, might not these reverend politicians reflect that, instead of ;f 100,000 and ;;f5o,ooo new cathedrals in distressed districts, spacious and seemly churches for God's service might be better built for ^10,000 and ;f 5,000, and the balance devoted to such work as that of the Duke of Abercorn and Mr. John L. Sayer, of London ?

The same county councillor for Donegal gave testimony that, whereas the cartage of provisions by road from Londonderry used to cost the poor people of West Donegal an addition of £2 105. per ton carriage,

" Mr. William Hammond, agent for the Marquis Conyngham in the Rosses, purchased, in the year 1887, a small steamer, which he ran between Londonderry and Killybegs, serving all the ports on the coast of the county of Donegal, resulting in a reduction of the carriage from £2 loj. to lOi-. per ton."

Then the witness added the name of another Irish landlord to the foregoing : —

" Later on the late John Herdman, Deputy Lieutenant, came to Mr. Hammond's assistance, thus leaving us a regular sea service ever since."

xiv INTRODUCTION.

A duke, a marquis's land agent, and a deputy lieutenant — here are three specimens in a single district in a single Irish county of that class " which never does anything for Ireland " ; and yet they are incidentally mentioned by a single witness as being the means of earning and saving far more than ;;f 10,000 a year for the very people who are taught to curse them. I ought not to omit another piece of this witness's evidence upon the possibility of valuable reclamation of soil that is waste, and upon its actual reclamation, not by a board spending the money of the taxpayers, but by the private enterprise of a land agent. As I shall devote some space to the subject of Ireland's ample capacity to support a comfortable population, if only the element of enterprise and industry be forthcoming, I ask attention for this evidence in the present introduction : —

" The reclamation of moorland is a matter of great importance, as migration could be adopted, if even upon a small scale. Moorland drained, limed, and properly tilled gives good crops. In the townland of Cronashallog Mr. Hammond reclaimed a field of moorland of the rawest materials. I have known him to grow eighty tons of good potatoes in one year off this field, and a magnificent crop of oats the following year. . . . There are thousands of acres of this unreclaimed moorland within a distance of nine miles from here."

If, instead of the gospel of mendicancy, servility, and land robbery, the Jacobin clergy would preach industry, education, and honesty, Ireland, which is far more fertile than Belgium, would feed in comfort twice its population. It is not material, but moral, causes which are the curse of the country.

When we remember that the vital facts just quoted occurred in the most casual way in the evidence of a single witness, we can understand how complete would be the exculpation of thousands of the maligned class of Irish gentry, if the list of witnesses had not been carefully selected, " arranged for," in the interest of clerical demagogues and monopolisers. The Irish

INTRODUCTION. xv

gentry, their agricultural skill and enterprise, their considerable wealth, their intense patriotism and devotion to their native land, which only a fool or a knave would deny, their immense capacities for giving employment of every kind — all these qualities and qualifications make of them a magnificent asset of Ireland's wealth, material and intellectual. This is why English political genius wants them to take themselves and ;^i5o,ooo,ooo of Irish capital out of the country, for investment in English enterprise perhaps, while their wretched ex-tenantry, loaded with debt, are left to the tender mercies of worthless demagogues, lay and clerical, during life, and legacy-hunting priests in the article of death.

But I have one word more to say in these prefatory notes, a word on drink and education in a congested district ; and this will indicate some more of the moral factors ignored by the clerico-Jacobin charlatans. The scene is that district of Annagry, in the vicinity of Burtonport, where the Duke of Abercorn brought ;£'io,ooo yearly of London money to the fishermen of West Donegal. Here is a piece of evidence before the Congested Commission : —

Sir John Colomb — How many public-houses are there in Annagry ?

Very Rev. Mgr. Walker — Five, I suppose.

Sir John Colomb — I asked yesterday, and I was told there were eleven.

Very Rev. Mgr. Walker — There are not so many. There are four there right at the bridge.

Four, five, or eleven, there are enough public-houses for a population of 3,000 semi-paupers, as they are said to be. Of the neighbouring island of Arranmore, containing 1,400 semi-paupers, we get the following compendium of the drink facilities : —

Sir John Colomb — Are there any licensed houses in Arranmore ? Very Rev. Mgr. Walker — There are a number. Sir John Colomb — Can you offer any idea of how many there are?

xvi INTRODUCTION.

Very Rev. Mgr. Walker — I am almost ashamed to tell you there are seven.

Sir John Colomb — Then on Arran Island there was no doctor and seven public-houses ?

Very Rev. Mgr. Walker — Yes, that is it, and no nurse.

It will be admitted that drink facilities were ample, notwithstanding that "influence for good " exercised by the clergy over their flocks. Let us see what were the education facilities. Mr. Walker, an industrial inspector and adviser under the Board, will give us an Annagry specimen. Mr. Walker will later speak of lacemaking under the Board and in the ordinary schools. Lace is an ill-paid embellishment of the rich, often exacted from the starvation, blindness, and tuberculosis of the poor, which drives the wretched work-girl out of Ireland to risk all in the slums of New York. It is a favourite specialty of convent factories.

Sir Antony Macdonnell — I understood Mr. Sutherland to say that the schools that he saw were inadequate to the average attendance. When the average attendance is exceeded, what becomes of the children ?

Mr. Walker — They are simply crowded.

Sir a. MacDonnell — Is not that insanitary ?

Mr. Walker — The sanitary condition of a great number of these schools is very bad. I have been in a school in Annagry 13 ft. 3 in. by 23 ft. 6 in., and there were eighty children there.

Sir a. MacDonnell — How many ?

Mr. Walker — Eighty.

Sir a. MacDonnell — And one may expect that children like that will carry away the seeds of disease ?

Mr. Walker — Yes ; and then there was a rough floor, and you could hardly say which was the roof and which was the wall.

The Commissioners, some of them, were horrified at this awful state of affairs, and further questions ensued : —

Mr. Bryce — For eighty children, that is four and a half square feet per child. Is there any regulation in Ireland with regard to the space provided for each child in a national school ?

Mr. Walker — Yes.

Mr. Bryce — What is the regulation in Ireland with regard to the square foot space per child ?

INTRODUCTION. xvii

Mr. Walker — I am not quite sure.

Sir John Colomb — I think it is ten square feet.

Sir a. MacDonnell — There is no definite space in Ireland.

All these " national schools," be it not forgotten, are priest-managed ; and neither Sir Antony MacDonnell nor any other representative of Dublin Castle will ever venture to insist upon " floor space " or breathing space for the children blessed by such celestial administration. What does the reader think of drink and education facilities in a congested district of the Congested Board, sanctified by all the moral influence of a political priesthood since generations and generations ?

And this inspector and adviser appointed by the Board, paid by the taxpayer, "is not quite sure " what space to stand and breathe is required or requirable for the poor little children who are to be the future men and women of Ireland. Do we wonder at everybody trying to emigrate from such a country ? Again a bit of evidence : —

Mr. Sutherland — But the people go out of the country that you are at the expense of training ?

Mr. Walker — You cannot prevent it.

So the taxpayer is paying the Congested Districts Board, its favourites, nominees, and inspectors, for that net result.

The results of the Congested Board mentality are amazing. On the one hand, there is that miserable hovelful of stunted school children, stifling in their four and a half square feet of floor space, eighty Irish Catholic children, we are told. On the other hand, while those piteous youngsters were sickening in that stenchful air, there was being built, " for the greater glory of God," a vast and lavish new cathedral in the petty townlet of Letterkenny, costing scores of thousands of pounds, surrounded by other architectural exhibitions of the clerical spirit, all erected on the very borders of extreme congestion, for whose

b xviii INTRODUCTION.

relief the collecting tambourine was being rattled at all ears of the taxpaying public ; but not a single thousand pound note was divertible from all that stone and mortar, and stained glass, and statuary, for the children's dens of Annagry and scores of other seats of moral management in faithful Donegal ! This, I believe, is what is known in clerical Parliamentarianism as " guarding the souls of Ireland's youth." Nor is it the clerical mentality alone which is amazing in the congested districts. The laity whom those clerics have trained for generations are not unworthy of their spiritual guides. Always ready to receive, they will do absolutely nothing themselves for the common good. Applications were made to the Commissioners at Burtonport for public funds to start a couple of young coopers in what was described as a certain occasion of profit. " Only £^o would suffice," it was pleaded. But the Commissioners were beginning to know their men ; and Sir John Colomb put this question to a pleader, which goes to the bottom of the cadging, unhelpful, uncivic frame of soul developed by the mendicancy of the congestion policy : —

Sir John Colomb — Do you mean to say that in a district like this, wM something like ;^i 0,000 a year coming in for fish — do you mean to say that, though that much money is coming in here, ^30 cannot be raised to start a paying business that would employ these young coopers ?

And do not those well-trained congesters understand how to make the taxpayer pay for the lands required for the enlargement of uneconomic holdings ? They have profited by nearly twenty years of the Congested Board and its taxpaid beneficence. Here is an answer which a Commissioner got from the Marquis of Conyngham's agent as to the legitimate expectations of those intelligent persons : —

Sir John Colomb — I want to know the initial expense the Congested Board would have to face if they made up their mind to acquire that land for the purpose of enlarging adjoining holdings.

INTRODUCTION. xix

Mr. Pomeroy — // would have to be fifty or sixty years purchase, no doubt.

Decidedly the peasant disciples of the Congested Board do not favour confiscation as applied to themselves. They may be said to appreciate fully the value of individual ownership.*

Still, perhaps, the most shocking illustration of the mentality which has been engendered in Donegal and similar districts is the juxtaposition of such schooldens as the "Black Holes" of Annagry; the Burtonport fishing community, which does nothing for the children, though it has gained probably ;;f 100,000 by the improved market initiated by the Duke of Abercorn in 1895 ; and that Letterkenny new cathedral which has absorbed ;;f 100,000 in stone and decoration, while the children of Donegal have those dens for school-houses !

But enough in the way of preface. More complete details must be left to the body of the book.

F. HUGH O'DONNELL.

* A very amusing instance of a Donegal priest's appreciation in his own case of the value of ownership came before the Commissioners. Colonel Irvine, one of the land agents who are denounced so furiously for declining to sell land at prairie value, gave this specimen of the prairie value set upon his own land by one of the most magnificent of the clerical advocates of a short way with the landlords : —

Colonel Irvine — There is one holding I would like to draw attention to. It consists of four acres ; the rent was 15^. gd. There were no improvements whatever, and it was sold for £iiS to a tenant by the Rev. Mr. McFadden himself — that is, for one hundred and forty-six years' purchase ! ! I

Part I. The Cooking Of Evidence And The Cooking Of Commissions

PAGE

WHY I TENDERED EVIDENCE BEFORE THE COMMISSION . 3

THE commission's HOSTILITY TO UNSELECTED EVIDENCE . 8

The Broken Promise — Land League Evidence Preferred — I take Warning.

THE CONGESTED BOARD AND INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE . I3

The Fate of a Witness — The Priests and Migration — The Specific Instance — The Wrath of a Commissioner.

OFFICIAL JACOBINISM 20

THE COMPOSITION OF THE COMMISSION AND THE NUCLEUS

POLICY 23

What is the Nucleus — The Bishop of the Board — A Boycotting Commission — Punjab Pohteness — Selection of Evidence.

REVOLUTIONARY CLERICS: HOW THE BOARD HAS AGRICUL- TURE REPRESENTED ....... 37

Mr. Healy's Revelation — Down with Ownership ! — Down with the Classes !

THE PARISH PRIEST COMMITTEES AND THEIR TWO THOUSAND

AGENTS 47

The Priest is the Committee — Paying Insanitation — Priests and Cattle Drivers — The Board's Bishop Mr. Redmond's Treasurer.

Part II. Partly Historical

UNSUCCESSFUL STATE SOCIALISM — NOT CONGESTION BUT

UNEMPLOYMENT . 59 xxii TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

ON THE HISTORY OF THE SHAM CONGESTION MOVEMENT . 6l

Foreign Competition — Policy of Undercultivation — The Butt Party — Why Parnell stole an Amendment — Board Failures.

THE FATAL CHANGE IN IRISH TILLAGE .... 73

From Tillage for Subsistence to Tillage for Sale — From Native Food to Foreign Imports.

• PART III.

HIRUDO HIERATICA.

THE HUGE AND INSATIABLE EXACTIONS OF THE POLITICAL

CHURCH 85

A BLOATED CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT — THE EXAGGERATED

EPISCOPATE CONVENTUAL LEECHES .... 87

Comparison with Foreign Catholic EstabHshments — Palatial Churches and Pauper Flocks — Convent Begging Letterwriters — Why the Money goes Abroad — Church Decoration and Clerical Commissions.

THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE CLERICAL GRAB .... lOI

Technical and Industrial Schools — Dirt and Hunger in the Schools — Grabbing the Local Boards.

THE MYSTERY OF LOUGHGLYNN HOUSE . . . • H?

How the Taxpayers lost ;^8,900 in order to plant a Foreign Convent in Roscommon.

THE CLERICAL COMBINATION AGAINST PROPERTY NOT CON- FINED TO THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS . . . I28

An Example from Tipperary — Cattle Driving Churchmen and their Magistrates.

THE CONGESTED BOARD AND THE RIBBON LODGE THE

ROBESPIERRES OF THE SACRISTY .... I34

Part IV. Leading Causes Of Poverty And Depopulation

SUMMARY OF LEADING CAUSES OF POVERTY AND DEPOPULA- TION .......... 149

TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxiii

AGRARIAN LEGISLATION AND AGITATION : HOW THEY

IMPOVERISH AND DEPOPULATE I55

The Land Court Farce — The Farmers Expel the Labourers — Witness-Baiting again — The " Tablet " on Undercultivation — A Bishop's Protest.

THE GOMBEEN GROCER AND HIS SPIRITUAL AND JUDICIAL

ALLIES 167

Gombeenism and Bad Food — Whisky and Holy Water — Gombeen Magistrates — The Publican's Till and the Collection Plate — Sir H. Plunkett's Removal.

THE PEASANT PROPRIETARY NOSTRUM FREQUENT FAILURES

AND DANGERS I78

Anglo-Indian Faddists — Where Peasant Proprietors Succeed— Unknown in Ireland — The Coming of the Jew — The Irish-American Lesson.

"LIBERTY OF TESTATION" THE DEATHBED GRAB . . 187

French Law Protects the Deathbed — No Protection in Ireland — The Consequence to the Family and the Nation.

PAUPERISING DEFECTS OF CHARACTER PRODUCED BY THE

DOMINANT SYSTEM I97

HOME AND CONVENT SWEATING 205

Home Sweating and Tuberculosis — Serf-like Convent Labour — Killing Lay Industries — Lacemaking Slavedrivers — The Freeman's Avowals — Starvation Wages and Blinded Eyes.

Part V. The Key Of The Irish Revolution

THE POLITICAL SACRISTY AND THE RIBBON LODGE . . 217

The Price of the Priest — Priests of the First Land League — The Congested Board Clergy on the Ribbon Lodge Platform — Why Ireland is a Foreign Mission.

THE LODGE, THE BISHOP, THE BOARD, AND THE COMMISSION 233

Excommunicated in Scotland — Blessed in Ireland — Mr. William O'Brien against Ribbonism — The Bishop of the Board welcomes the Ribbon President.

XXIV

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Part VI. Conclusions

TYPES OF THE ARRANGED COMMISSION

Still the Dark Ages— Clerical Mentality — Lord Dudley as Jean Jacques Rousseau — An Electioneering Commissioner— Congested M.P.-making — The Board's Lazzaroni.

HOW NOT TO SEE

Drunkenness and Subsidies — Avoiding Evidence — An Irish Journal on a Congested Steeple — The Filthiness of a Thousand Priest-Managed Schools — Mr. John Dillon's Electors.

THE RESULTS OF BLINDFOLDING — LONDON AND ROME — THE

DEAD HAND FOR EVER ! 275

List of Non-Inquiries — What Ireland might be — Lord Castletown's Experiment — The Secret Service of the Sacristy — The Coolie Mission — Dublin Castle and the Dead Hand.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE CONGESTED BOARD AND THE LAND LEAGUE .

TO-DAY THE IRISH BEG AND STARVE ; THEIR FATHERS AND FED

GREW

INSTRUCTIVE FACTS AND AVOWALS

THE WORST EVILS OF IRELAND ....

REVELATIONS OF MEDICAL SERVICE IN IRELAND .

CLERICAL SCHOOL FRAUD AND RUIN OF CHILDREN

SPECIAL DANGER OF CONVENT FACTORIES

THE BOARD AND LABOUR SWEATING

GOVERNMENT PLACES FOR CLERICO-JACOBIN PRESS

APOSTLES OF ANARCHY

IRELAND A N.^TURAL TIMBER COUNTRY.

153 165 185

195 203

215 231

247 275