The happy Irish

Front matter

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Foreword

AS if a guiding Providence had so ordered it, the indestructible soul of Ireland emerges from the smoke and ruin of an upheaval in the labour world which has shaken England to her very foundations.

It is a cHmax, a coincidence, luminous with meaning for mankind.

Ireland enters upon the strewn and trembling stage of British politics with a significance, not only for England, not only for the British Empire, but for aU the foremost nations of the earth now regarding each other from the outposts of civiHzation, from the fortified and haunted frontiers of progress, with a dolorous apprehension.

She does not arraign the ambitions of these civiHzed nations — ^many of whom learned the alphabet of their first pure culture from her own heroic sons— but she asks to disentangle herself from the confusions of an industriaUsm, the violence of a materiahsm, and the brutahzing ugHness of a false civiHzation, into which she has been dragged, harshly and tyrannously dragged, against her judgment and her will.

8 FOREWORD

In making this claim for liberty, Ireland must surely dispose the conscience of England to reflect upon the character of English civilization, the course and purpose of EngHsh progress. To the troubled nations of the earth, but in particular to England, Ireland now puts the question which her missionaries asked of heathen Europe in the sixth century, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his soul aHve ?

It is a question of arithmetic. England, long accustomed to the logic of the ledger, long versed in the grammar of Profit and Loss, should be able to give an intelligent answer.

What shall it profit a nation if it become the clearing-house of the whole world, and miss the way to peace ? What shall it profit a democracy if it gain the whole Wages of Mammon, and lose the Joy of Life ?

Are we not at least incHned to forget, both politically and individually, that nothing which belongs to peace, nothing which tells "in making up the main account " can be bought with money ?

NOTE On the Sweating of Belfast . . . 326

Preface

AN honest man, going to Ireland with no prejudgments in his mind, might easily return from his study with inspiration, argimients, citations, and economical data for two distinct books. One book would persuade the world to call for Home Rule. The other book would convince the world to maintain the Union. I can conceive of a perfectly just and righteous man writing both these books.

A Frenchman once said of a certain critic that this ingenious gentleman had three ways of making an article : to assert, to re-assert, and to contradict himself. But in the two books for which I can imagine a single writer there would be no violence of contradiction, no confession of conversion, no casuistry, shuffling, explanatory apologetics, and peevish vindications of a changed mind. Each work would blow into the air the steam of a distinct thesis, would travel if on parallel then on separate Hnes, and not side by side, racing to left and right of the same platform at a single terminus, but in clean contrary directions, passing each other only foi a single moment, looking all the way for different signals, and reaching ultimately the other's antipodes.

And neither of these two books — ^this is interesting and fuU of encouragement for the bored reader of poHtical speeches and factioneering pamphlets — would make use of arguments employed by the rival protagonists of Irish poHtics. Both books would belong to humanity rather than to faction, and the two covers might be dyed with any colour in the milliner's window save orange and green.

It is aU a question of definition, purpose, and point of view. What is life ? What is the object of existence ? What is the conscious direction of your own spiritual progress ? Until one has come to a more or less reasonable conclusion on these matters, it is idle to entertain a definite, rigid, and exclusive opinion on the subject of Ireland ; and, since the scope of these matters is so wide and so uncertainly mapped, the same man, in different moods, looking at the identical question from two distinct points of view, may come with equal honesty to conclusions at variance with each other, so entirely at variance that they are not reaUy in conflict. " Corot disait que pour saisir Vdme et la beaute d*un paysage, il fallait savoir s^asseoir."

1 mean this : that a man perfectly satisfied with civihzation, convinced that social evolution is pursuing the right road, and persuaded that competitive commercialism is the predestined way of the human species, would come to an opinion about Ireland different from the conclusion of a man who suspected civilization and felt himself inclined to call a halt to the progress of disorderly materialism. Or, the very same man, feeling at one moment that he could do nothing to arrest the movement of democracy and at another moment inspired to beheve that the only hope of salvation lay in a violent antagonism to this power, would come honestly and righteously to two different decisions.

For myself, I went to Ireland with the leaning towards Home Rule of a man who knows the Imperial Parhament to be congested and who has the loose inherited faith of the average modern in the usefulness of local government. Beginning at the south I worked my way zigzag through the villages and Httle towns of rural Ireland tiU I came to the north, and I arrived in the north with no more definite idea in my mind than this conviction, that the Irish people are charming, dehghtful, virtuous, and sagacious. The industrial north filled me with depression. I can think of few sharper contrasts in the world than to go from some beautiful village on the coast of Donegal straight to the squalor, the poverty, the desperate ugliness and the deadening depravity of Belfast. This was my experience. I came from the rugged grandeur of Port-na-blah, from the society and gracious hospitality of happy peasants and kindly fishermen, into the mud and destitution, into the noise and vulgarity, into the shabbiness and disquiet of Belfast. I am no stranger to slums, I am acquainted with the poverty of big cities in many countries both East and West, but I was overwhelmed by this particular contrast. I felt in Belfast that industriaHsm was the enemy of the human race, I compared the beautiful faces and the noble manners of those primitive people with whom I had stayed on the shores of Sheep Haven with the hard looks, the stunted bodies, the anaemic faces, and the rough manners of these thousands of human beings crowding the streets of Belfast. And I felt that civihzation had taken a wrong turning, that progress was hurrying along a road that led only to destruction, that hfe as industriaHsm had made it was something harsh and detestable, something for which humanity owed no laudamus to the heavens. One night I sat in my hotel at Belfast with a singularly enHghtened member of the working-class, a local leader of the Sociahst party. We discussed for some time the wages paid in Belfast factories, the conditions of labour, housing, and the Insurance Act, of which he is an enthusiastic supporter. Then we turned to the general question of Sociahsm. Towards the end of our coUoquy I said to him, " Are you quite sure that you will get aU the social reforms you require in Belfast out of an Irish ParHament ? "

His eyes expressed surprise, he regarded me for a moment with astonishment, then, laughing as one who sees his way out of perplexity, he demanded with amusement, " You don't think I'm a Home Ruler, do you ? "

The incredulity of his tone surprised me, for it expressed a far greater contempt of Home Rule than ever I had heard on the lips of perfervid Orangemen.

" Are you not ? " I inquired.

He repHed, with decision : "I should think not ! No ; I'm a Unionist, out and out. England is absolutely essential to us. An Irish Parliament would be entirely Tory. It would do nothing in the direction of SociaHsm, quite the reverse ; it would be the most Conservative Government in the world. But we can screw out of England all we want, bit by bit, and she can help us to pay the bill ! "

Then I saw an argument for the Union which the professional agitators of the Orange Party in their devotion to religious animosities have excluded from their oratory ; and I saw also an argument for Home Rule which the Liberals of England in their enthusiasm for social reform have omitted from their dialectic. Here at my side was a Socialist, a man of great intelligence devoted to the betterment of working-class existence, a man for whom Mr. Lloyd George does not move fast enough, and who condemns the manual labourer for trusting to his trade union instead of using, with an absolute force and with an uncompromising energy, the political instrument — and he was a Unionist !

Penetrate to the soul of poHtical contention, and there is always perplexity. The Tory defends the Indian Government, the SociaHst attacks it ; and yet the Indian Government owns the railways and the land of India, and uses public funds for the purpose of developing national trade. What the Socialist wants in England he attacks in India, and what the Tory condemns in England he passionately defends in India. Lord Curzon is a Tory in England, a SociaHst in India ; and Mr. Keir Hardie is a Socialist in England, a Tory in India. " The world's heroes have room for all positive qualities, even those which are disreputable, in the capacious theatre of their dispositions."

But the perplexity is even greater in the case of Ireland. EngHsh Conservatives and Ulster Socialists are of one mind about the Union ; English Socialists and Irish Conservatives are of one mind about Home Rule. The Enghsh Conservative condemns Home Rule, and the Irish Conservative clamours for it. The Irish Radical fights for the Union, and the English Radical condemns it. Sir Edward Carson commands the regiments of Irish Socialism in the army of British Conservatism, and Mr. John Redmond leads in the army of Irish Conservatism the regiments of English Socialism.

Such chaos and confusion may seem incredible, but it is true ; and, indeed, it is this very confusion which puts into a man's hand the veritable thread which he must follow if he would emerge into the light and sanity of open air from the lab3rrinth of Irish pohtics.

There are two Irelands — ^not as they are known to Enghsh people as CathoHc and Protestant Ireland, as Home Rule and Unionist Ireland, but Conservative Ireland and Democratic Ireland. Conservative Ireland regards Home Rule as the one way of escape from the industrial anarchy, the commercial brutahty,the ultimate bankruptcy, which she holds must be the inevitable fate of union with England ; and Democratic Ireland, filled with the Futurist's enthusiasm for machinery and modernity, and utterly reckless of agriculture, regards the Union as her one means of marching abreast with the civihzed nations to the goal of SociaHsm.

It requires profound thinking and a prudent judgment to decide which of these Irelands has the truer vision. I am persuaded, for instance, that a mere pressure of atmosphere, a httle change in the weather, even a sHght difference in the digestive organs, might turn the judgment of so nice a philosopher as Mr. Arthur Balfour from one decision to the other. Are we not aU the victims of our moods, and do not our moods largely control for us the judgments of our intellects ? Does not life fluctuate for all of us, as once for Bishop Blougram, between faith diversified by doubt and doubt diversified by faith ? But let a man settle once and for all his definitions of Hfe, and hold to them, if he can, throughout his reflections on Ireland, and then he may possibly reach a conclusion to which he can give the energy of his voice and the solemn affirmation of his vote.

Chapter I I

rpO fall in with popular notions is the wisdom -*- of most transitory writing. One thing the self-respecting reader resents with energy, and that is disturbance of his prejudices, upheaval in his preconceptions.

Thus it is that a distinguished writer recently began a book on Paris with the charming avowal that no sooner had he detrained than he felt a sparkHng tide of festive gaiety surge up against him from the pavements of Paris and bear him smiling and radiant away into the sunlight of that briUiant city's incomparable joy. The driver of his cab, he tells us, sang all the way from the station to the hotel. Whether the distinguished author, infected by this gaiety, pushed his hat to the back of his head and joined in the chorus, we are not informed ; nor is it stated that the hall porter executed a 'pas seul at his entrance into the hotel, that the hft boys broke into song, and that the clerks at the office pledged him in champagne.

But enough was said, and with the first stroke of the pen, to set the self-respecting reader entirely at his ease, and we may fancy how he straightway settled himself down in his arm-chair, stretched his legs, puUed complacently at his pipe, and gave himself completely into the safe-keeping of this jolly and confirmatory author.

But consider the state of that reader's feehngs if the book had opened with a reference to the mental fatigue of streets too long and rigid, to the lugubrious melancholy of fat cab-drivers, to the listless, fagged, weary, and bored expression of pale-faced, goggle-eyed gentlemen gathered round tin tables at dusty boulevard restaurants, like mourners at a wake, to the blase and cynical aspect of a music-hall audience, to the poverty and wretchedness of Parisian miserables, to the dullness and torpor of overdressed children in the Bois — ^in fact, to that total sensation of ennui and exhaustion which strikes the mind of many travellers in their peregrinations of the French capital. No ; such a beginning would be fatal to a cheerful progress. Paris, by the common consent of universal ignorance, is the gayest city in the world. . . .

Now, the popular notion of Ireland is the reverse of all this. Ireland is a distressful country, a savage and dreary country populated, except in a brilliant north, by assassins and dynamitards who sleep with a pig in their beds, and spend the day either in tearing holes in their own coats, or treading on the tails of somebody else's coat. Of late a body of writers has arisen with the gospel of another Ireland, but it is still a melancholy Ireland. According to these mystical authors there is something sad and tragic in the very atmosphere of Ireland, a spirit of wistful reverie broods upon Irish Hfe with the pensive sorrow of an immemorial grief. In the tender manner of Pierre Loti, and with the elegant gestures of Rossetti, they breathe into our susceptible souls the feeUng that Ireland is gloomed with some unearthly woe and tortured by an everlasting spiritual unrest. To deny the gospel of these mystics, to say that potatoes flourish in the soil and Httle boys go sHding on the frozen ponds, is to confess oneself dull of soul and lacking in refinement of spirit.

And, again, there is the popular notion that Irish life is consumed in the fiery furnace of poHtical controversy. It was bad enough, we are told, when the CathoHcs warred against the Protestants, and when the Home Rulers took arms against the Unionists ; but now, when the Home Rule camp is the scene of an internecine conflict so fierce and implacable that no man's Hfe is safe from Portrush to Skibbereen — the country has become unpardonably tiresome.

And so the average EngHshman, who has his garden to plant, who is worrying over a chess problem, who suffers from indigestion, and who has just received a troublesome letter from his aunt in the country, puts Ireland out of his head and wishes that confounded country, if not ten thousand leagues under the sea, at least three thousand miles away from EngHsh shores.

But if the inquirer can manage to exist for a few weeks without confirmation of his prejudices, and can accustom himself for the same period to the mental disturbance of receiving illumination, he will surely find that a journey in Ireland is as deHghtful and interesting an occupation as anything to which he has ever addressed his affections and intelligence. He will be refreshed by the contradictions of his prejudices, and exhilarated by the enlightenment of his ignorance. In a word, he will find that there is nothing in life half so beguifing and half so amusing as sober truth. The truth about Ireland — the social, political and religious truth — ^is perhaps the most interesting romance in the world.

Therefore, if I cannot secure the confidence of my reader by beginning with the customary sigh, at least let me stimulate his curiosity by this hint of something strange and amusing. He will find himself, if he be so good as to foUow me, in the stimulating and agreeable company of noble landlords, sitting in the cabins of Donegal peasants over a peat fire on the stone hearth, listening to the thunders of a Fenian, supping and sitting up to all hours in the night with a CathoHc bishop, chatting to a sharp Quaker, standing in a snow bhzzard on the rugged cHffs that front the Atlantic, wandering in glens as beautiful as fairyland, talking to lovely maidens who blush and hang the head before a stranger, hearing the tales of old men who remember the great famine, visiting a hospital, examining a school, penetrating slums, moralizing in a monastery, and discussing without fear of firearms or shillelaghs some of the most delicate problems which agitate the Hibernian bosom. And as he makes the journey, he wiU find, if my conceit does not mislead me, that the tangle of Irish politics is a very simple and human matter, that the great rock of difficulty, known as the Irish question, is but a pleasant hill for a morning's walk, and that the chief thing to become acquainted with in Ireland is the Irish heart, which is as kindly and gracious and patient a centre of human affections as the heart of the woman he loves best in the world.

" No man," said Parnell, and created a false impression, " has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation." One does not hear in Ireland the tramp of a multitude marching through the night, does not see stern and exalted faces hfted to the dawn, does not discern the moving of dark banners in the gloom of the upper air. Rather one beholds a young and capable matron seated at her fireside, who raises her grey eyes to the visitor, and says without apology, but with a whimsical and ingratiating play of laughter at her Ups, " I wish to do my own housekeeping ; I think I can do it in a better way, and more cheaply, than other people can do it for me. I have no desire to fall out with my neighbours, no inclination to remember old scores against them. I simply want to be left alone to attend to my own business and bring up my own family in my own way."

The old gentleman next door may be alarmed by this ambition, but the lady has really no more evil intent against his prosperity than to sell him the surplus of her butter and eggs.

II THE OFFENCES OF OUR FOREFATHERS

Before we set out to visit our neighbour, it is well to have in mind some knowledge of the temper which characterized our past relations, if only to avoid a faux pas.

To begin with, then, it is a fact acknowledged by every historian, high and low, that England, having set herself to subdue the Irish, without success, screwed herseK to the point of attempting to exterminate these irrepressible neighbours. This is a most important matter to keep in mind. AU the pother of these present days has flowed from England's blundered poHcy of extermination. Our forefathers endeavoured to wipe the Irish slate clean of Irishmen. They did not succeed. The remnant which survived the bloody sponge refused to kiss the hand which had clenched itself to erase them.

The poet Spenser has described one after-effect of this poHcy : " Out of every corner of the woods and glens, they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat of the dead carrions, happy were they if they could find them, yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves. ... In short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly made void of man or beast."

Sir Arthur Chichester saw some children gnawing at the flesh of their starved mother. Lecky tells how old women lighted fires to attract children, whom they slew and devoured. The English soldiery put to the sword " bHnd and feeble men, women, boys, and girls, rich persons, idiots, and old people." M. Paul Dubois narrates : " In the Desmond country, when aU resistance was at an end, the soldiers forced the people into old barns, which they then set on fire, putting to the sword any who sought to escape ; . . . soldiers were seen to catch up children on the points of their swords, making them squirm in the air in their death agony ; . . . women were found hanged from trees, with the children at their bosoms strangled in the hair of their mothers."

Not only did the EngHsh destroy crops and drive cattle into their own camps that the Irish might be starved, not only this, but they deHberately and with cunning purpose made a great slaughter of infants. The terrible phrase, almost the most terrible phrase in human records, "Nits wiU be lice," was the laughing, murderous, and devilish justification for this slaughter of babes. The steel of England's might ran red with the blood of Irish infancy. Lips that had not learned to speak a human word, Hps that knew nothing more than to hang contented at the circle of the mother's breast, were twitched with agony, uttered screams of desperate pain, and grew purple in the wrench of violent death. Little feet that had but lately got the trick of balance ran, stumbled, and fell before the smoking swords of most inhuman murderers. Little hands that had but lately learned to fold themselves in prayer were raised in clamorous appeal for mercy to men who smote them down, and set their heels upon those stricken faces. " Nits wiU be lice," cried these slaughtering devils, and the beautiful flower of Irish childhood was crushed into the bloody ooze of a land that was like hell.

Most men who have abandoned the idea of eternal torment reserve some special place of agony and torture in the next world for Philip the Second of Spain, the Duke of Alva, and Cardinal GranveUe. They could not meet those souls in heaven without murderous thoughts and instincts only fit for Gehenna. But the atrocities in the Low Countries, those atrocities out of which the spirit of WiUiam the Silent rose godlike and subHme, can be matched step by step, and inch by inch in the records of England's dealing with Ireland. No just Englishman can read that history without a shudder, without an overwhelming sense of shame, without uttering the prayer, " Remember not, Lord, our offences, nor the offences of our forefathers."

On the evening of Dettingen, George the Second exclaimed, " God curse the laws that made these men my enemies ! " And M. Paul Dubois pronounces true judgment when he says, " It was England herself, it was the EngHsh in Ireland, that made the Irish rebels." Mr. John M. Robertson has justly summarized our dealings with Ireland in these few sentences : " Seven centuries of rapine and violence. Carelessness alternating with ferocity. Not a gleam of humanity, nor of political wisdom. Not even the wisdom of the peasant, who takes care of his beast, lest it perish."

In vain did England plant out in Ireland people from her own shires, and people from the neighbour land of Scotland. In vain to these aliens did she give the rich pastures of Ireland, and forbid them either to speak Irish or to marry with Irish women. The rightful children of the soil, the little remnant that had escaped extermination, absorbed these invaders into the mysterious spirit of Irish existence. Depressed, broken, crushed, degraded, and impoverished, the faithful remnant did, nevertheless, in some most marvellous manner conquer without force of arms these foreign masters, and make them more Irish than the Irish. They clung to one thing, these aliens, one thing which marks their children to this present day — an arrogant conviction of superiority, a determination to maintain a social, political, and rehgious ascendancy ; but in aU else they became Irish, as different from the people of England and Scotland as the people of Glamorganshire are different from the people of Norfolk. Spenser exclaimed, " Lord, how quickly doth that country alter men's natures ! "

To a rightful appreciation of modern Ireland, it is essential that the English mind should possess, at least, this knowledge of the past. England's poMcy was first to subdue, then to exterminate, afterwards to overwhelm with an alien population. For seven centuries she showed to Ireland neither mercy nor wisdom, neither kindness nor inteUigence. For seven centuries she was tyrant, oppressor, and panic-minded coward. Never once did she employ righteousness and peace, justice and conciHation. And it was not until famine had driven Ireland to transitory crime, and transitory crime had driven England to fear, that the thought of responsibility, the idea of justice and reparation occurred to a few just and noble Englishmen.

" Your oppressions," said Lord John Russell, " have taught the Irish to hate, your concessions to brave you. You have exhibited to them how scanty was the stream of your bounty, how full the tribute of your fear."

England's whole poHcy towards Ireland may be expressed in two words : A crime and a blunder. This is a judgment with which Unionists and Home Rulers, every honest man in every nation under the sun, cannot help but concur. A crime and a blunder.

Ill

CROMWELLIAN COMMERCE

This also is a thing to bear in mind : —

When England had beaten the poor Irish to

their knees, had laid waste that lovely land, and

planted out her own subsidized people in every

quarter of the country, one thing remained vital and unsubdued — the indestructible soul of the Irish nation. Practical people in England guffaw at this indestructible soul ; gentlemen with money in the stocks, and a considerable stake in the country, ridicule any reference to the matter as a piece of stupid sentimentalism. Nationality, they say, butters no parsnips. An indestructible soul is not so useful as a balance at the bank. But these practical people are more versed in affairs of the Money Market than in the steadfast lessons of history.

A sense of Nationality is the Hfe-blood of a people. It is the quickening power which animates their action, enlarges their vision, and directs their hopes. And in Ireland, crushed and broken Ireland, even in her darkest hour, this conviction of an indestructible soul, this sense of sacred and affectionate Nationality, has kept ahve aU that is noble, all that is glorious, all that is beautiful and pure in Irish character. Nor was this passion of the spirit wasted in the region of sentiment or confined to the tubs and barrels of political agitation. It became a force in commerce. The practical people who now scoff at the idea of Irish NationaHty cannot know that the inspiration of Nationahty drove the suffering Irish from their knees, hfted them from the morass of destruction, and set them to the task of forging a destiny. Ireland became rich and prosperous. If she had stopped at that — if the spirit of Irish Nationality had arrested its pressure at that point — all might now be well with her. But rich, prosperous and rejoicing, this happy people set no boundary to their ambition. They became in their impious progress the rivals of England. And England — not with the sword, but with those instruments which Tariff Reformers would again place in her cleansed hands — once more reduced Ireland to beggary and ruin.

" One by one," said Lord Dufferin, " each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth, or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of the rival interests of England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enterprise have perished through desuetude." Irish ships, laden with beef, mutton, taUow, hides, leather, and wool, sailed every week to Dunkirk, Ostend, Naples, La Rochelle, and the West Indies, till England began to quake for her trade. And then came Navigation Acts which broke this growing trade upon the sea, and reduced Ireland to direst want. " The conveniency," cried Swift, " of ports and harbours which Nature bestowed so hberally upon this kingdom, is of no more use to us than to a man shut up in a dungeon." Ireland turned her attention to wool. " A real industrial enthusiasm," says Lecky, " had arisen in the nation.